


I don't do that anymore

by forgeturself



Series: Pittbull [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Has Panic Attacks, Bucky Is Trying, Cannibalism, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Drama, Drug Abuse, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mental Health Issues, Mild Gore, No Attempt at Humor, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Protective Bucky Barnes, Revenge, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Touch-Starved, Work In Progress, bucky no, sorry not sorry this got kinda dark and angsty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-10-25 13:24:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10765134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgeturself/pseuds/forgeturself
Summary: “My name... is Bucky.” It's the name Steve gave him, and the name the Winter Soldier assumed when he took over the role of Bucky Barnes, to stand guard between that little guy from Brooklyn and the rest of the world. And for the first time the weight of it on his tongue and the shape between his lips feel right, still heavy and barbed, but right.“No.” Steve point-blank denies, shaking his head and baring his teeth in barely contained anger. “No, it’s not.”or: This is about Bucky fucking everything up.





	1. took you long enough

**Author's Note:**

> So, uh... now the actual plot begins?
> 
> Kudos and comments mean the world to me!
> 
>  _Italic_ : memories  
>  ~~Crossed out~~ : happening subconsciously  
>  **Bold** : emphasized words in direct speech or similar  
> hover for translation  
> alternatively, translations can be found in the end notes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He can’t ever be good enough for Steve, he might as well stop trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> suggested songs:  
> ["Meet Me On The Battlefield" by SVRCINA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZrddJPGp1I)  
> ["Tension" by Korn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acUo9R6rsUA)

  


* * *

  


_He’s in the middle of a snow-covered tundra, hunting down a fugitive._

_She betrayed Hydra, they told him, make sure she’s dead._

_He didn’t. Like all his malfunctions done on purpose._

_It’s not Hydra who punishes him for his failure._

_Bullets hit his chest. Once, twice… thri-_

_“You wanted me to bleed out, to suffer until I’m begging for death?”_

_He stares up to her. The smile on his lips hidden by a black mask._

_She stares down at him, grimacing in pain, but she’ll survive._

_“That’s your fate now.” She spits in his face. “Dog.”_

_He bleeds out, in the middle of the cold desert. He’s not suffering, but he’s been begging for death for decades already._

  


* * *

 

He’s not thinking straight, but that’s okay, he’s only human after all. He makes mistakes, he’s not the infallible Winter Soldier anymore. It just so happens, he misses his target. No one can expect every shot to be a clean bullet to the head. He hit her foot and next her knee, he’s trying, really, soon he’ll hit her head, no one can blame him. And if he hesitates to shoot as she tries to crawl away, leaving a thick trail of blood behind, he’s only hesitating because his high human morals tell him killing is wrong.

He’s laughing though, a quiet, innocent laugh only meant for his own ears. It doesn’t fit. He shouldn’t be laughing while he follows her, grabs her leg and takes a knife to her tendons, slicing a red ribbon around her ankle. He shouldn’t get dazed and content with happiness as he soaks up her pained screams like water in the desert sand. Maybe it’s okay? Because it looks kind of funny how her foot dangles and bends in ways it couldn’t before, and her face looks just hilarious, open mouth he could stuff a grenade in, wide eyes like a deer in the headlights, about to be killed. But that’s not going to happen. It’s not right to kill her, after all, Hydra never killed him.

He catches up to her again just as she tries to pry a gun from the stiff fingers of a corpse with adorable clumsiness. Hydra never taught him to be a gentleman, but his mother did. So he crouches down beside her and gives her a reassuring smile. Gently takes her hands to give her his own gun. She looks at him horrified, confused, until it clicks.

He’s given her a weapon. He’s smiling.

She lifts the gun. Slowly. “Hail Hydra.”

And shoots herself. A clean bullet to the head.

Bucky really is a master marksman, doesn’t even need to pull the trigger.

  


* * *

 

_He doesn’t bleed out in the middle of a snow-covered tundra._

_Of course not. Though he tries his best, pries his fingers into the wounds to keep them open._

_When they come to collect him, they point their guns at his head._

_“You know what this means, Soldier?”_

_He doesn’t bother to respond so they make him._

_Order through pain._

_It doesn’t go quite like they expected._

_Half a dozen bodies lie beside him, in the middle of a blood-covered desert._

_Maybe in the summer this spot will be overgrown with flowers._

_Before the sun goes down they find him. By now he’s too far gone to kill them._

_“You know what this means, little thing.”_

  


* * *

 

“Get away from him, Soldier, or I swear I’ll shoot you.”

Bucky suppresses the urge to outright laugh at Agent 13 and keeps his focus on the man he’s crouched over. His only response is to lift his head for a fraction so she can see the gleeful expression on his face. Her trembling voice already betrayed her. Bucky has heard it hundreds of times before from all the people who were scared shitless of the Winter Soldier. She won’t dare to shoot. She knows if she does she might as well shoot herself.

The man beneath him whimpers and struggles weakly, panicked eyes darting to the blond woman in search for even the slightest chance to get away from him. But Bucky won’t let him, tightens his grip, bites his lips in anticipation and slowly lowers the knife again.

“Captain Rogers, you need to come here, asap!” Agent 13 steps away and continues to talk into her com. She starts checking every body in the room only to find them all covered in their own blood and most of them dead. Two of them she kills in an act of mercy as they groan in agony and suffer wounds no human will ever recover from.

Bucky follows her movement out of the corners of his eyes, smothers his discontent by gently cutting through the flesh where his victim’s ears connects to his head and closes his eyes in pleasure when the man starts to scream in pain. He knows what he’s doing is wrong, not because Steve would tell him so, but because he is human enough to know that this is utterly unnecessary torture. But they deserve it. They deserve the very worst he can bring himself to do to them. He broke all their bones, skinned them alive, cut out their eyes and hearts until he was soaked in their blood. He didn’t ask questions, just waited for them to scream and cry and beg and it was the sweetest sound he’ll ever hear. And it marks him as a monster, as cruel, as inhuman and he smiles.

Even when Steve storms into the room and sees what Bucky has done and is still doing, he can’t bring himself to stop or even feel bad about it. The smell of fear and blood clogs his nose and keeps his thoughts in an overwhelming haze of revenge and power. He'd been too often on the receiving end of torture to not enjoy being the one inflicting it for a change.

“What are you doing?” Steve asks with quiet horror, afraid of the answer he’s going to get.

And there it is. The tiny voice in the back of his head, screaming at Bucky to stop, please stop, no one deserves to be tortured whatever their crime. Stop it, right now, or Steve will turn away from you. He’ll sigh and shake his head in disappointment. _Oh silly little thing, what am I going to do with you?_ He’ll put you in a box, throw you in a river and never look back.

“Nothing. He just died.” Bucky says dryly, looking up from the man he’s been torturing and casually slices his throat.

Steve isn’t looking at him, though, but at the corpses littering the floor and their wounds stemming obviously from torture, not from fighting for their lives. His face and voice are hard when he finally glares at Bucky and warns him. “This has to stop, soldier. After the mission you and I will have a serious talk.”

“Yes, sir.” He responds intentionally submissive and hides a grin when Steve struggles to keep his righteous anger. He still doesn’t want to order Bucky but this time he’ll have to see that nothing less will make the Winter Soldier stop.

  


* * *

 

_“Oh come on, don’t look at me like that. You wanted to be punished.”_

_His mind flees the pain and brings him back into the tundra._

_He’ll kill her in a heartbeat this time. Cut off her head and hands and legs to make sure she’s dead._

_“Nono, open up, be a good boy for me.”_

_He’s back on the table with thick chains around his wrists and ankles._

_He can’t disobey. It’s not an option._

_“Does it taste good, little thing?”_

_He chews hastily and swallows._

_Focused on ignoring the pain on his face and the slice of flesh in his mouth._

_“Still hungry? Oh, you’re such a glutton. The good doctor will want to see you next.”_

  


* * *

 

Back in the Quinjet Steve sits down next to him while the others keep their distance making it easier for him to ignore them. Giving him space to lose himself in his head as he’s thinking about the Hydra base they’ve just successfully cleaned and destroyed. About how it was all so much harder than he’d thought it would be. Fighting side by side with Steve felt as unreal as a seventy years old memory could feel, even worse it was a nightmare of expectations to meet. Impossible to pretend to be human when he needed to be a weapon. When it was kill or die. But every time he fell into the efficient behavior pattern of the Winter Soldier, Steve seemed to intentionally knock him back out with worried, little smiles and gentle touches, as misplaced on a mission as children’s jokes.

When he started to make stupid mistakes and miss clear shots, he let himself get separated from Steve and it got blissfully easy once he was alone and could fall back onto years of indifferent murder.

He stares at his hands, both of equally red color, drenched in blood, none of it his own.

_Drip, drip, drip. All of it his own, seeping from his flesh where barbed wire is cutting deep into his skin, coated with acid impeding any healing. “Make a note. Time: 30 minutes. BPM 130. Blood loss approximately 50 %. Subject responsive to electric stimuli. Vocalization and movement declining.”_

Slowly Bucky lifts his right hand to his lips and licks. It tastes flat and disgusting, cold iron. Not so different from his own blood. He starts with little kitten licks but soon he’s licking in long strokes over his skin and sucking diligently every finger clean.

“Soldier?”

_Kneeling in the middle of the white tiled floor in a pool of blood, growing colder and colder. His legs already gave out and so did his throat. His arms are spread wide, chained to the walls. “Note. Time: 40 minutes. BPM 160. Blood loss approximately 60 %. Subject barely reacting to stimuli. Subject conscious but in shock.”_

His arms start to itch and burn with the too real memory of little blades slicing through his skin and cutting him open again and again, acid burning away the raw flesh as it tries to knit itself together. The feeling of pain and vertigo is nearly overwhelming, fueled by the taste of blood in his mouth it gets worse and leaves him lightheaded and cold. But this is Hydra’s blood and he deserves to drink his fill. With ire and stubbornness he suffocates the nausea.

“Please don’t do that, soldier.”

He pauses only for a moment to meet Steve’s troubled gaze and then goes on to make a show of licking the blood from his hand with a wide, red toothed grin.

But his friend doesn’t back down. “Please. It’s obvious you’re just as sickened by this as I am.” He says with hardening features.

“Don’t have to watch if you’re such a pussy, Captain.”

Steve lifts his chin, sets his jaw in a stubborn line like he always did when he saw a challenge and holds out his hand in a demanding gesture.

Bucky’s mocking grin turns into a frown as he looks from Steve’s intense glare down to his hand and back up. Would he take his metal fingers still stained with blood? Lick them clean, taste the foul copper on his tongue? Remember the Hydra agents writhing and screaming in pain as their blood painted them red? “No.” He refuses unnerved by the image and hides his hand in his lap. Steve has to stay untainted by the monster he calls his friend.

“We’re in this together. The blood you spill is on my hands, too.” Steve says with the conviction born from too many freezing nights in a cheap apartment in Brooklyn, from too many fistfights in New York’s back alleys, from too many trenches, air raids and battlefields in the war. Together they survived it all.

Bucky lowers his head and says nothing. The past is long gone, washed away and drowned in an ocean of blood. They parted ways when Steve was frozen and Bucky was forced to move on alone. When Steve died a hero and Bucky became a monster. There hasn’t been a together in the past seventy years, there won’t be one now. Not where Hydra is concerned.

  


* * *

 

Later on the flight he throws up. He hates the pity in his friend’s face as he offers him a sick bag and holds the hair out of his face, but he’s glad Steve’s too disgusted to check the content afterwards. Bile mixed with half congealed blood and some flesh cut from a face he remembered.

As soon as they land on the roof of the tower, Bucky storms inside and down the stairs to escape everyone, even ignores Steve calling after him. It was his first mission with him and his Avenger friends and he fucked it up so badly it also was his last. In the safety of the tower he can hide the monster from Steve but not when he’s supposed to fight people. He can’t play around at being human in the midst of gunfire, smoke and explosions where he needs his instincts to be an efficient soldier.

Once he is in his room on Steve’s floor he gets rid of all his weapons, throwing them on the ground without care. The last knife in his hand he hesitates, pictures the pain it inflicted on his victims, pictures the pain it could inflict on him. But he isn’t with Hydra anymore. There is no protocol to follow, no punishment to endure, no cryo-freeze to escape to. He has to stay awake and sane and pretend to be human so Steve won’t lock him up and throw away the key or tell him to leave. Tell him ‘You’re a broken thing. You’re not even a person, you don’t have rights. You’re not my friend. You’re not my Bucky, you don’t get to be treated like him. You’re a fraud and a liar. I never want to see you again. I hate you.’

His thoughts break apart, glass shattering on the ground, he doesn’t want to think anymore, not about this, not about anything, not about Steve. He lets the knife drop to the floor and moves on to the bathroom, stripping off the rest of his gear and clothes with shaky fingers. In the shower he leans his head against the chilled tiles and turns the temperature as cold as JARVIS will let him. Thoughts washing away with the blood and grime flaking off his skin, mouth open to rinse out the sour taste. Hands pawing at the wall in his desire to melt into the stone, into nothing. Not bothering with soap or shampoo, just losing himself in the slight burn of his whole body growing cold and numb.

Until the water gets warmer and melts away the ice to wake him up again. Wake the monster up again. Forces him to open his eyes, come back into the world where he has to deal with his hate and anger and bloodlust. He wants to maim and torture and kill all of Hydra’s followers. He wants to paint the world with their torn up body parts, build a mountain into the sky out of their skulls, bring hell to earth with their suffering. Take his revenge on them for everything they’ve done to him. Break all their bones, pull out their teeth, grate away their skin, bring them pain, pain, pain, unimaginable pain.

He wants them to suffer like he did. But Steve won’t let him.

With an irritated scream he punches his left arm into the wall and rips out the pipes and cables. “JARVIS! FUCK OFF!” It’s so easy to let the rage take over and blindly smash everything he can get his hands on. Rip everything apart, stone, glass or metal and not to stop when he tears his own skin open and his throat raw from crying. Break everything around him to pieces until nothing but bare walls are left and his punches grow weaker with every hit. While his already exhausted muscles start burning under the strain, his bionic arm only drops when his legs crumble under his trembling body and anger gives way to the bone deep tiredness he so craves.

Bucky curls up in the ruins of the bathroom, breathing and heartbeat slowing down, dimly aware that Steve will be so disappointed by his volatile outburst. This is the best he can do and it’s not nearly good enough.

  


* * *

 

Fear is a concept the Winter Soldier didn’t know but for Bucky it’s the first sensible thought he wakes up to every time they take him out of the ice. A noise outside his cell has him awake and alert in a low crouch with his back to the wall in the fraction of a second. Wide eyes fixed on the door as it slowly opens, scratching over grinded rubble, and reveals a dark, looming figure, faceless but a cruel smile.

_“Oh sad, little thing, are you still waiting for him?”_ It says with an abomination of pity and kneels down in front of him. A claw, a hand filled with knives, reaching for him, peeling away his skin where it touches the arm covering his face. _“Remember what you’ve done.”_

“I don’t want to remember.” Cold sweat breaks out over his too hot skin, his innards rearrange themselves into tight knots and his breathing picks up, gets quick and shallow.

_“Remember what you are. You can’t hide this from him.”_

“No, please, stop.”

_“He’ll be so disappointed.”_

“Please, go away.” He sobs his pathetic excuse for resistance, never did put up enough of a fight against Hydra. Curls further up and freezes, paralyzed, bound and gagged by the fear crawling through his flesh, picking at his brain with needles.

_“Nothing more than a broken, useless thing. Ugly mess, annoying, dumb and cumbersome.”_

Steve can’t even look at him, his lips are moving in a scene of a silent movie, but Bucky knows exactly what he’s saying. ‘You’re a monster. You should leave. I don’t want you.’

_“He will just shake his head, turn around and leave.”_

He feels himself turning cold, turning to stone from the inside out, organs breaking apart, bones getting brittle, if he moves he’ll break like paper recovered from a ship sunk long ago. Sand fills his lungs, an hour glass brimming as his time has run out, and Steve’s gentle voice tells him ‘It’s better this way, you shouldn’t focus to get your breathing back. No, you can just suffocate like this, here in the corner of a cell deep down in some godforsaken Hydra base you can vanish from existence.’

Steve wants him to. Steve says ‘I don’t hate you,’ with a smile on his face, ‘I don’t care about you enough to hate you.’

_“You’re not good enough for him.”_

Bucky screams with stunted lungs, the high pitched, broken gasps of a drowning man. Screams until he gets light headed and numb, until darkness tugs him down with mercy into the ice. Closes his eyes, the door with a dull thump and lulls him in with empty promises, that everything’s okay, nobody will hurt him, he’s safe. Further down, down, down until he dreams of a place, an island that doesn’t exist under the sun.

Where he doesn’t fuck up, because there are no expectations.

Where Steve doesn’t forgive him, because there’s nothing to forgive.

Where Steve hasn’t left him, because there’s nowhere else to go.

  


* * *

 

Unconsciousness is an escape. It’s what he did to survive Hydra. More effective than anything else, running away from reality was his choice of resistance. And Hydra loved him for it since it made him just so much easier to use. Sure he killed them left and right, whenever he got the chance, whenever they let their guard down around him. He was the evolutionary pressure on Hydra’s scientists, they made their mistakes only once. But soon enough he would be begging to be put down, to be wiped. His killing spree just the truculent behavior of a spoiled prince murdering the servants in his mansion. In the end he was just too cowardly and weak to really fight them, to fight until he’d be killed or frozen forever, in essence the same thing.

Steve wouldn’t have to put up with him. His best friend Bucky Barnes would have stayed in his memory as the only Howling commando to give his life in service of his country.

  


* * *

 

He’s barely conscious, but he knows what he has to do. Steve told him to leave and that’s exactly what he’s going to do. Leave and never look back, rip out his heart on the way, he’ll survive, or not, it’s okay. Steve will be better off without him. Steve will be happy.

He gets up from the bed he was lying on, sheets pooling at his bare feet. His skin starts to itch under the caress of warm air. He’s naked, covered in sweat, dust and his own dried blood but doesn’t waste a thought on washing up, instead he grabs some fresh clothes and throws them on with quick, precise movements. Stealing the clothes will be the last nuisance he’ll be to Steve, who’ll probably throw the rest out and burn them anyway. Eradicate all the traces of the broken monster that wears his friend’s face like a free pass for being human.

He steps into the living room, eyes already fixed on the door. Ducks his head, quickens his steps, still as silent as a ghost. It’s a futile attempt though. Steve’s sitting on a couch, already looking up and Bucky can’t not turn towards him. It’s for the last time, he tells himself, he could be allowed to have this last memory of eyes blue like the summersky, forever his favorite color, steve-blue. When he meets his gaze he can’t suppress a silent whimper and instantly looks away, eyes trained back on the door. He can’t read Steve, his face full of concern and worry, but that can’t possibly be right, it’s just his subconsciousness playing cruel tricks on him. On uncertain legs he reaches the door and pushes down the handle with trembling hands. Steve doesn’t want him. He needs to leave. Steve won’t hold him back. Hope has always been his most sadistic enemy.

“Soldier?”

And Bucky freezes. He has to please Steve, but he doesn’t want to hear what he has to say, doesn’t want to be hurt when he’s already down. Closes his eyes in submission and grabs the handle like he needs something to keep him upright, steels himself for the worst. Whatever Steve will say to him or do to him, he’ll accept it.

“Where are you- … Are you leaving m-me?”

It’s a straight forward, direct question. Easy to answer. Yes. Easy to add. Stay safe. And not a word comes out of his mouth, his throat closed up so tight he can barely breathe. Why is Steve asking like he wants him to stay? With a voice so brittle and small like its 1943 and Bucky’s leaving for war?

He blinks hot tears out of his eyes, feels them stream down his face, feels pain flaring up in his skull. He’s always been an ugly crier with snot clogging his nose and loud sobs, the shredded ruin of the Winter Soldier’s heart straining to show emotion. Bucky sinks to his knees, shivering with fear and despair. This is what’s left of the great Fist of Hydra: A crying child too scared to be alone, to die alone, to live alone. Too afraid to go through another day of having nothing, like he had to for the most part of his life. Too much of a coward to open the door and relieve Steve of this burden. Bucky never wanted to leave him, not in 1943, not in 1945 and not now, seventy years later. The world is worth nothing to him if he can’t share it with Steve.

He makes himself small, smaller, takes up less space, is less of a problem for anyone and presses his throbbing head into the cold wall.

“Can I… Can I touch you?” He’s so close now, kneeling beside him, kneeling at Bucky’s deathbed.

Yes, please. And Steve _laughs at him, open and earnest. “You don’t deserve affection. Stupid, little thing.”_

Bucky grips his head and keens, because Steve didn’t laugh at him, Steve didn’t say that. It’s not real, at least not anymore. It’s just another memory he’d rather forget.

It takes all his courage to ask with a cracked voice. “Are you…” real? But he takes the coward’s way out. “Do you want me to leave?”

“No.” Is Steve’s instant answer like he feels just as much as Bucky that even the smallest hesitation would bring about ages of self-doubt. “Please, never leave me. You’re everything to me.” He carefully lays a hand on Bucky’s thigh, and of course he flinches at the contact, however gentle and caring it might be. The Winter Soldier didn’t have a concept of touch as affection, but for Bucky his whole body is one raw nerve to his touch. He grabs for Steve’s hand as he retreats and one look into his eyes has Bucky rooted in bewilderment at the despair and fear that mirrors his own far too closely.

“Never leave me.” Steve echoes, barely more than a whisper. But it’s not the same as before and they both know it. It’s an order that Bucky confirms with a nod.

Bucky’s heartbeat picks up while he lets his body crumble into Steve’s with relief. Big arms wrap themselves around him and nimble fingers stroke gently through his tousled hair. He wants to keep him and that’s everything that matters. If Steve wants him to, he’ll stay at the tower and use the killing machine of a body Hydra gave him to cook and clean and do the laundry and never touch another weapon in his life. And if Steve wants him to be nothing more than a box to take up space in his closet, if he wants him to be his dog or his slave, it’s nothing Bucky hasn’t been before.

Steve lets him cling as much as he likes. Old Steve’s body would have broken like a twig, New Steve will maybe have a few bruises for the next hours. What his body takes in a stride, his mind might not, so Bucky entangles himself as soon as he can bear it and stays with hands on his knees, head bowed, waiting for a pardon from the only person it matters. “I’m sorry.”

He feels Steve’s gaze on him, heavy and inescapable. He must know what Bucky’s craving for and hesitates. “Tell me, you didn’t want to torture those people. Tell me, it were the remnants of Hydra’s conditioning that made you cruel and heartless.”

It takes everything. It takes everything for Bucky to lie to him. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“Next time, please stay at my side. I know you can take care of yourself but you can’t run around torturing people, not even Hydra.”

“Next time?” Bucky lifts his head to stare at Steve in disbelief.

The blond gives him a serious look and explains. “It’s a second chance. You’re a good man, don’t let Hydra dictate your actions.”

Bucky can’t bring himself to tell him just how wrong he is. “I’ll try my best.” Is all he quietly says. But it’s true. For Steve he’ll do anything no matter how impossible it seems.

“I know.” And the smile on his lips and the sun in his eyes are worth every effort. “Now let’s get you cleaned up.”

  


* * *

 

Cleaning up means showering. Showering means going into Steve’s bathroom which he generously offered since Bucky’s looks post-apocalyptic. Going into the bathroom means letting Steve out of his sight. So…

“Steve?”

“Yes?”

Letting Steve out of his sight means leaving him, right?

He fumbles with the nails of his remaining hand. “Would you… You said… Don’t…” Nope, he can’t say it. But he can behave like spoiled child, Stark demonstrated the gesture often enough. He makes grabby hands in Steve’s direction and it's surprisingly effective, because the blonde turns from confused into smiling and steps closer to take both of his hands.

“Whatever you want.” And lets himself being led into the middle of the bathroom.

“Could you…” Bucky tries again. “Could you stay?” Are the best words to leave his mouth. “Please.”

“Of course.” Steve sounds hoarse, just standing there with slightly tinted cheeks.

Technically they’ve been naked around each other often during the war where urban etiquette just didn’t apply anymore and showers were made to clean as much soldiers with as little money as possible. The Winter Soldier doesn’t know what it means to be naked in the presence of another person, so Bucky pretends he doesn’t either. He undresses and looks at Steve in what could be a challenge but really it’s just a hollow gaze, a mask worn to hide his insecurity. He’s got no intention of seducing him, he wouldn’t even know how and Steve likes girls anyway. He needs, he wants the intimacy to suffocate the emptiness tightening his chest.

The way Steve looks at him in return is nothing but affectionate, slowly the blonde lifts a hand to his neck and leans forward to gently press their foreheads together. Bucky feels their breath mingle, feels his eyes on him, keeps his own down and closes them when he can’t bear it anymore. He’s too afraid Steve will see right through him if he meets his eyes, will see what Bucky dreams of when he sleeps, will see how desperate Bucky is for his touch.

“It’s alright. You’re safe.” Steve says in a low, soothing tone and lets go to get rid of his own clothing. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” He’s the first to step into the shower and turn the water temperature up. When Bucky doesn’t follow he offers his hand and an encouraging smile. “Come on.”

Bucky’s gaze flickers from his hand to his face until his trail of though dissolves in too many miles of perfect, golden skin and he gives in, steps into the shower and doesn’t hesitate to loop his arms around Steve. It’s like a drug, throwing his sense in disarray with so much living being touching him. He can feel Steve’s breathing, his heartbeat, his laugh as he lifts his arms to hold Bucky close and press them further together.

The hot water running over their entwined bodies feels so unreal, Bucky has to bury his face against Steve’s chest to keep himself from doing something stupid. He tries to lose himself in his own head when Steve shifts in his embrace to reach for a bottle of shampoo and it’s partly a success until he starts raking his fingers over Bucky’s scalp in slow, gentle circles and he can’t suppress the groan lodged in his throat. There’s no way Steve didn’t hear it so Bucky just clings to his body and hopes he won’t comment on it. Thankfully he doesn’t, though Bucky can feel him chuckle as he continues to lather the dark strands of hair with utmost care and make him fall apart beneath his hands.

Why did Steve teach him what it feels like to be cared for and comforted? Now he won’t ever get enough of it.

He decides to let it all happen, to move like Steve wants him to, with half lidded eyes, a small, content smile on his lips and a mind falling slowly but surely towards sleep. With Steve’s hands sliding over his skin, scrubbing away the blood and grime, the fear and hate, until there’s nothing left but their raw bodies.

And Bucky feels safe and home and there’s barely any difference to the dreamworld he conjures to survive a particular thorough wipe.

  


* * *

 

And the dream continues over the next days as they talk and laugh, treading carefully around any hurtful memories. They cook and eat together, real food made from scrap with ingredients they order through JARVIS, and sit down to watch TV afterwards. Nothing more violent than silly panel shows and children’s movies. And when the modern culture references get to confusing they take their time to look them up, neither of them keen to ask any of the Avengers.

On one sunny autumn day they even go out to sit in the park and watch the leaves turn color. But Bucky’s bad company outside where he doesn’t have to worry about JARVIS intercepting his activities on the internet. He seizes the opportunity to do some research on himself and his time as the Winter Soldier and loses himself in his head while breaking into databases and sifting through files.

Before the ice-cream in his hand can melt Steve takes it to eat it himself in three ambitious bites. He probably asked Bucky beforehand and he’s probably asking Bucky now if everything’s okay. At least his lips are moving and his brows are furrowed in concern.

When Bucky’s thrown out of his concentration by a car backfiring, they’re already on their way back to the tower, Steve holding his hand and tugging him gently into the right direction.

  


* * *

 

When they’re sitting opposite of each other at the counter of Steve’s kitchen with bowls of steaming curry in front of them, Bucky dares to ask: “What was your Bucky like?”

Steve pauses before it lets the spoon sink back down and looks at him, trying to find out where the question came from. “My Bucky is everything you are.” He answers after much hesitation.

Bucky snorts. “Liar.”

“What do you want to hear? That he was a kind person? That he stood up for those who couldn’t defend themselves? That he knew right from wrong?”

“How does one know right from wrong?” Of course he knows objectively there’s no answer, all the more he’s really curious what Steve will say.

“Wrong is when people suffer, right is when they don’t.” Steve answers with conviction but at the same time leans an inch forward expecting to be fought on his explanation.

“So why is it right to kill Hydra’s people? They suffer when they die, am I right?”

“It’s not right. You want me to say it’s okay to kill them, because they make innocent people suffer?”

“Yeah, that’s the point, isn’t it?”

“I’d rather they didn’t die. We have a justice system in place. Not all of Hydra’s minions serve them of their own volition. You’re the best example for that.”

“You think the American courts are prepared for something like Hydra?”

“They’ve handled various terrorist cells, Hydra isn’t much different.”

“You’re aware that the government’s way of ‘handling’ terrorists involves imprisoning them without so much as a trial, torturing them and generally not giving a shit about human rights.”

“I’m not saying the system is perfect. But in the end equality and freedom are what we all believe in.”

“And what Hydra wants to take away. You’ve seen of their actions. Project Insight, killing millions due to some harebrained algorithm. And still you’ve seen nothing of what they’re capable of.”

“I’ve seen the battlefields, the destroyed cities, the concentration camps. I’ve seen you on the table in a labor camp.” Steve swallows and doesn’t elaborate, he doesn’t want to remember.

Bucky doesn’t either, but he doesn’t let himself being held back by that. “So you’ve seen innocent people starved, raped, beaten, tortured, experimented on, gassed or burned alive by Hydra. I just don’t understand why you would think killing them or handing them over to the ‘justice system’ would ever be enough.”

Steve pushes the still half full plate away and sighs. “If you torture somebody because they tortured somebody, it makes you as wrong as they are.”

“No, that’s not true. They torture innocents” He doesn’t say ‘me’, this isn’t about him. “because they want to break them, take away their freedom. Hydra is evil, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And I not only want them to suffer, I want them to be an example so others like them won’t ever dare to act out on their authoritarian, world-domination, crap-shit thoughts. There are enough Neo-Nazis in the US and they can all shut up and die for all I care.”

Steve looks at him, staying quiet for a long while. “You’d want their dead bodies stuck on a pole in the middle of Time Square?”

And Bucky’s taken back by the image, but “Yes, that would be just about perfect.”

“So why torture them before they die? Everyone would be afraid of a corpse, tortured or not.”

This time it’s Bucky who hesitates. “I want them to hurt like I did.” He admits finally with a quiet voice.

“An eye for an eye” Steve quotes the old testament. “Will make the world blind.” He quotes Gandhi and Bucky buries his face in his hands and groans. “Listen to me. Violence will just cause more violence.”

“What, you think someone will avenge **them**?” Bucky asks with a skeptical raised eyebrow.

“Well, they do have families and friends, but that’s not what I meant. Being aware of violence puts everyone through a trauma. Humans are prone to prejudice and ignorance. They shouldn’t be encouraged.”

“You’re saying, they won’t understand why I tortured and killed them, so they’ll make up their own reasons and their own reasons will be awry?”

”Yeah, pretty much. The majority is always wrong.”

“You just declared over half of the American population as stupid.”

“Well, I fought against more American bullies than German ones in my lifetime, so… Maybe not stupid, but easily tempted.”

“Most Americans were racist when we joined the Second World War. They probably still are.”

“Don’t pretend you torturing Hydra’s agents could fix that.”

“It makes me feel better.” Okay, yes, Bucky can admit to himself that his reason is less than weak.

“There must be something else that make you feel better.”

Yes, there is, one in particular, he’s looking at it. So this is the point where he’ll just shut up and eat his curry which has long gone cold.

But Steve doesn’t drop it. “What makes you happy?”

“I don’t know.” Bucky lies and doesn’t look at Steve who’s smiling wistfully.

  


* * *

 

The next mission he simply isn’t allowed to screw up. It’s his only chance to show he’s still useful, he isn’t broken, he can recover from what Hydra did to him. He can help Steve and his friends, protect or kill for them if they want him to, **only** if they want him to. Be a tool, a weapon, an attack dog. He just needs a leash. Through his research he knows now how Hydra was able to handle him.

So this time when he’s breaking the fingers of another Hydra scientist, he’s asking questions. If he doesn’t stop even after she gave him all the answers he needed, well, without Steve around there’s really no reason to stop and the Winter Soldier neither takes prisoners nor does he leave behind survivors.

He’s laughing, only slightly hysterically, all the way until he is outside again. With a loud boom the base explodes not a hundred feet behind him, far too close for comfort, forces him to pause his escape and take cover as the ground shakes violently beneath him. Fire illuminates the night through heavy rain, smokes rises to the sky and pieces of debris fly through the air into the surrounding trees.

The Winter Soldier doesn’t make mistakes, but Bucky on the other hand lost track of time when there were more scientists who writhed and screamed so prettily while they bled out slowly under his careful administration of sharp, cruel steel. And they cried and drooled so beautifully when he strapped them into the Chairs and burned their brains slowly to pulp with voltage so agonizingly low it would have cost him maybe a few days of memories. As he watched their faces turn from horrified to pained to vacant, he imagined himself in their place, how he must have looked, nearly peaceful in the end.

As soon as the worst is over and soot and ash tint the falling rain black, he checks his backpack and weapons and sprints into the darkness of the wood, in the opposite direction he left his car in with a running engine. There’s only one road he could take by car and he wasted so much time, if Hydra sends any support, they will expect him there.

Not ten minutes later he can hear the first choppers approaching and before long another explosion tears the dark sky apart with fire as they probably found the heat signature of the car and blew it to kingdom come. Either they didn’t know it was him or the happy times when Hydra wanted to take him alive are finally over.

It’s about 700 miles to New York City. In the message he left Steve, he promised to be back in two days, but as cold rain drenches his clothing and he’s stumbling through the mud for five hours straight, still running in the wrong direction to evade all of Hydra’s search parties, he has to admit that he might not even make it in three.

  


* * *

 

“Welcome back, sir.” Though he expected to be noticed as soon as he set a foot into the tower, Bucky still flinches at the sudden voice. “As to Captain Rogers’ request I am obliged to inform him immediately of your return.”

“Hi… JARVIS. Yeah, sure.” He croaks between heavy breaths and makes his way slowly towards the elevators, too exhausted to be bothered with stairs. The muscles in his legs are burning from running mile after mile through the city where Hydra picked up his trail again for the third time. “There might…” He sways and starts again. “JARVIS, there might be some people…” What the hell is he doing here? He can’t lead a bunch of Hydra agents to the tower and then just let JARVIS deal with the fallout. He shouldn’t have come back here in the first place. Shouldn’t have led the enemy to Steve’s home. “Never mind.” He turns around and pulls a gun, determined to go back out and shoot anyone down who was dumb enough to come after him.

But the door doesn’t open again. He blinks confused at the handle then at his hand, thoughts sluggish from being awake for two days straight, until JARVIS says: “The Iron Legion will deal with any threat, sir. There is no need for you to fight.”

Bucky pauses and swallows nervously before he dares to ask: “How many are there?” How much did he screw up? He clings to the straps of the slightly charred backpack to remind himself that his mission was worth it.

“No threats detected, sir.”

The thought that JARVIS could be lying gets lost in his exhausted brain. A deep sigh escapes his lips and he lowers the gun. “Okay… okay. No threats detected. No threats.” He echoes the words more to reassure himself than anything else. Finally he’s safe, can let his guard down, can allow himself to feel the numb pain and unbearable tiredness pulling his body down like a stone in the ocean. When the gun slips through his fingers and clatters to the ground he doesn’t bother to pick it up again. One hand against the wall to support him he turns around and walks through the corridor. It’s late at night, or early morning, and he used a back entrance so the chances of running into any Stark Industries employee are luckily next to nothing.

Before he can reach the lift though, it already arrives, doors sliding open to reveal a Captain America with arms crossed in front of his chest and a look on his face that turns from worried to angry the moment he lays eyes on Bucky.

“You’re back.” Is all he says with thin pressed lips.

Bucky just throws him a tired glance, drags himself into the elevator and lifts his hand to push a button on the panel. But his brain is shutting down and he can’t for the life of him remember what floor Steve’s apartment is on.

~~[035611:18102014:msg to J.A.R.V.I.S….~~  
~~log detail: 4265642e]~~

Slightly puzzled he steps backwards as the doors slide shut and the elevator starts to move upwards. He barely registers that he avoids tumbling into Steve only because his friend takes a careful step to the side.

“Are you hurt?” The concern in his voice is palpable even to Bucky’s muddled brain.

There’s blood all over his combat gear, most of it not his own. He wasn’t hit by a bullet, he would remember that, but he peeled himself from the ground after some nasty falls when he parkoured through the city, so there might be a sprained ankle or two and some insignificant bone damage. His answer is nothing more than a shrug and a grunt, though he should have put more effort into it, because now Steve asks JARVIS to stop at the medical floor.

“No, don’t.” He doesn’t want to see the humans in white coats, prodding and poking, sticking needle after needle after… “I want to… May I sleep, please.” He begs submissively as Hydra liked the Winter Soldier to do. His legs nearly give out, threatening to pull him down on his knees, hands behind his head, before he stumbles into the corner of the cabin where he can hold onto enough wall for support to stay more or less upright.

“What happened to you? Where were you?” This time Steve’s questions sound nearly frantic, but Bucky has no energy left to deal with anything.

“Talk to me, when I’m awake.” He slurs dismissively and shoves Steve’s hands away when they want to help.

“When you’re awake? You left me! You were gone for nearly a week!”

Bucky didn’t think about it, not for long anyway. There was no time. He did his research, located the Hydra base, waited for rain and attacked. He was only gone three or four... or some days. Steve shouldn’t be so upset about the whole thing. It’s not like he died. He even came back in one piece or at least without wounds a good night’s rest wouldn’t easily fix. His eyes drift shut at the thought of sleep and he slouches against the wall. He stops caring for anything else.

The elevator stops and when Bucky doesn’t move, Steve just takes his hand and pulls him into the apartment causing him to trip over his own feet and falling into Steve’s supporting arms like a damsel after being rescued from the evil dragon.

“’M not your princess, Stevie. Lemme go.” He weakly pushes himself away from the warm, stable body and Steve reluctantly lets him go. Bucky throws him an irritated look and ignores the hurt on his friend’s face in favor of stumbling towards his room where he could close his door and lie down for a day or two. Only Steve stops him, grabs his shoulders and crowds him against the wall. He’s staring down at him with an intense glare Bucky neither wants to understand nor bothers to hold.

“You reek of blood and ash. Care to tell me where you were?”

“Oh, leave me alone, will you? I left you a note, I came back. What more do you want?” Bucky says boldly, not a thought left in his brain to check what comes out of his mouth.

“The note? The fucking note? ‘Back in two days, food’s in the fridge, see you, Winter Soldier, **winky-face** ’?”

“Yeah, more than Hydra ever got from me, when I left them.” If Steve wants to guilt trip him, he can do the same.

“You could have told me. Instead I wake up to an empty apartment and nobody knows where you are.” His anger is ridiculously misplaced. Steve has no right to keep him locked up in the tower.

“Not my handler, remember?”

“I’m your friend, remember?”

“No, I don’t.”

The words are out before he knows what he said. The words are out and Steve lets go of him. The words are out and the damage is done and Bucky’s brain short circuits with panic. “No, I lied, I remember you. I’ll be your friend, I’ll be your princess, whatever you want. Don’t hate me, please don’t hate me. I’ll be good. I’ll try harder. I’ll-”

“Don’t make promises you won’t keep. You killed people, didn’t you? Were they even Hydra, or just innocent people this time? Did you torture them again?” Steve’s voice isn’t hurt or accusing, it’s empty. “Stay here. I have to take care of something.”

He shakes his head, turns away and leaves.

He turns away and leaves.

He leaves.

  


* * *

 

Bucky watches the door, long after Steve has closed it behind himself. At some point his legs give out and he slides down the wall, ends up as a boneless puddle of misery on the ground. The tiredness is gone and so is any physical pain. His brain is stuck in a loop, playing over and over again the moment when Steve left. It feels like acid is burning away his insides, threatening to devour the painstakingly collected scraps of hope and love and humanity.

He’ll survive Hydra any day, but not a broken heart.

With numb fingers he takes off his backpack and opens it, searches for one of the syringes and gives himself a shot, fumbling just a little until the needle hits a vein.

It feels like getting sober for the first time in weeks. Everything’s in place, clear lines dividing the world, easy to assess and categorize. No distracting emotions attached, only plain, objective information. This state of mind carried the Winter Soldier through decades of Hydra and made him their most effective asset.

  


* * *

 

After too much time of staring blankly at the opposite wall the medicine can’t placate the Asset anymore and it gets up in one mechanically precise movement despite Steve’s order to stay. It walks into Steve’s room where it places itself and the backpack onto the bed and under the covers to inhale deeply the scent, the next best thing to the person it can’t have. Lying there it continues to stare with wide open eyes at the wall until the Black Widow enters through the open door with a face so blank the Asset couldn’t even read it if it wanted to. She smells faintly of sweat and blood, but her hair is styled to an inch of perfection so it doesn’t seem plausible that she was in a fight recently.

“Report, Soldier. I need to know what happened in the last five days.”

The Asset doesn’t bother to look at her, it has no intention to defend itself against any threat. It doesn’t care about a thing in a world feeling like a nightmare it can’t ever wake up from. “Information denied.” Is the Asset’s polite version of ‘fuck off’. With a brain running on nothing more than medicine induced static it’s so much easier to just follow protocol to answer her questions.

“Why?” She gives it a once over, eyes pausing only for second on the backpack.

“Insufficient permission.” It has an unpleasant memory of having its tongue cut off, so it doesn’t stick it out at her stupidity.

“Because I’m not your handler.”

It’s not a question and the Asset doesn’t provide an answer. So the effects of the medicine must be wearing off because it whispers with a hitch in its voice: “He left.”

She sighs and sits down beside it. “No, listen. He’s just upset. He’ll probably never leave you, no matter what you do, but you’ll have to do better if you want anything more than that. And I know for a fact you can do better.”

“How’d you know?”

“I’ve seen you under Hydra’s control, constantly drugged and tortured and electrocuted because even as a machine you always fought to malfunction, to miss every shot they told you to take. You forced Hydra to cripple you if they wanted to use you. You were strong when you had nothing and now you have Steve.”

The Asset would frown at her if facial expression meant anything to it, because either she’s lying or it’s missing all memories of her.

“I can’t tell you it’s wrong to torture Hydra’s minions. I’ve been there and I did the same.” She laughs self-deprecatingly. “I’m no Steve Rogers with the moral compass of a human being. Hardly anyone is and you don’t have to be either. Just concentrate on what’s important to you. Taking your revenge on Hydra in the cruelest way possible like they deserve, or having Steve smile at you. You can’t have both.”

In this moment, in the safety of the tower, far above the ground, away from any fighting or violence, it’s not even a decision. When the next mission against Hydra comes around and the opportunity to make them suffer presents itself again, the Asset will have the medicine to keep it on the leash. **If** Steve is still willing to give it another chance.

  


* * *

 

The smell he’s breathing in tells him he’s safe despite the underlying note of gun powder and gore. What woke him up are the voices outside the room sounding like something is wrong. When he opens his eyes he’s still groggy with sleepiness and it takes him a while to remember where he is. Apparently he never left Steve’s room and just slept in his bed with his bloody and torn clothes like old woman Silverhair in the house of the three bears.

As soon as he’s able to make out the voices and words he realizes he’s supposed to overhear them. Bucky has never heard Steve talk about him to someone else before. He’s sure he does it, but always managed to do it out of a super soldier’s hearing range.

This time Agent 13 is arguing with him in the living room, loud and clear. “He should be locked up in a psych ward instead of walking around with a gun in his hand. Did you forget what he did to those people?”

“Did you forget what they did to **him**?”

“He’s not a victim anymore. Nobody’s forcing him to do anything he doesn’t want. But he’s tortured people for fun and he’s shown irrational and violent behavior. Allowing him to accompany you on a mission was a bad call.”

“I won’t lock him up. If he wants to fight against Hydra I’m glad to have him at my side.”

“With all due respect to his valiant role in the war, Captain Rogers, he might look like your sergeant, but he isn’t. He’s the Winter Soldier, capable of murder and cruelty without any remorse. You can’t control him.”

“What? You think the CIA can?”

It hurts only a little, that that’s the only point Steve’s going to argue.

“Yes we could. The government has a facility with enough security in place to incarcerate somebody like the Winter Soldier. We can even offer him the extensive psychological help he’s in dire need of.”

“He’s already gotten so much better in the last two months.”

This isn’t Steve arguing against Agent 13, this is Steve arguing against himself. Everything she’s saying he already debated with himself and he obviously came to the same conclusion she did, he just doesn’t want it to be true.

“He vanished for five days and came back with a small army of Hydra-agents on his tail. Do you know what they said about him while interrogated? They said he tortured dozens of them, he went so far to fry their brains and eat their faces. They were hunting him to put down a rabid dog. He’s mentally ill, Captain. It’s only a matter of time until he turns on innocent civilians.”

“I promised him a second chance to prove himself. And he will.”

“So we can count on your cooperation if he spirals out of control again?”

It takes a notable amount of time for Steve to answer. “No. You have no right to treat him like a criminal. It’s not his fault he’s messed up.”

“That’s true for most criminals, Captain. But when they’re volatile they need to be contained until they’re not a threat to society anymore.”

Steve stays quiet, probably agreeing inwardly.

“Just consider this: What would your friend Bucky Barnes do if he could see what has become of himself?”

He’d have killed himself. He did try.

Maybe the Winter Soldier just didn’t notice him succeed.

What makes him Bucky anyway? Memories don’t make a person, actions do. ‘Bucky’ _“Who the hell is Bucky?”_ is nothing more than a name Steve gave him. He barely remembers his parents, he certainly doesn’t remember them calling him Bucky. To them he was ‘James’ and James went to war and never came back.

And Bucky? _“Hang on! Grab my hand!”_ Bucky fell from a train and then… and then…? Bucky died a thousand deaths by a thousand hands. He was broken into pieces and put together again, over and over, a new design, a better weapon, less human. Like the ship of Theseus, Steve might still look at him and see his Bucky, but whatever Hydra transformed him into has nothing in common with the person who would take Steve on double-dates and ignore the girls in favor of a scrawny, blond kid.

For all the memories he has of their life together, they mean nothing in the light of what he’s done in his life alone.

Bucky would give the Winter Soldier the coup de grâce and know he’d done the right thing.

  


* * *

 

At the briefing he stays in the background and only speaks when he’s asked. They’re all wary of him but only Agent 13 speaks out openly against him. Once, before she gets shut up by Steve’s “We’ve already talked about this.”

The plan of attack isn’t complex, the important part is that they want to get a head figure of Hydra alive. Bucky’s only worry is that he has to find a moment after they’ve arrived to get the medicine unobserved into his system.

He’s the last to board the Quinjet so he won’t have to feel their eyes on his back. A seat next to Steve, farthest away from the others has been left for him. Everyone brought some form of entertainment to last them the 4 hour flight. It’s obvious though that nobody’s going to relax in his presence. The Black Widow’s wearing earbuds pretending to listen to the music, Hawkeye’s playing a game on his StarkPhone while the Quinjet’s on autopilot and Agent 13 is openly staring at him.

“Can I use you as a pillow and sleep for a bit?” Bucky asks too quietly for the others to hear and Steve gives him confused look but nods. So Bucky doesn’t hesitate to find a comfortable position to close his eyes in with his head on Steve’s thighs and a hand curled around his knees. He even goes so far to tug at one of Steve’s hand so it covers his head. The image of a docile pet truly owned and controlled by its master and Steve stroking his hair is just an added bonus.

  


* * *

 

It’s the easiest thing in the world. The Asset doesn’t aim to make them suffer, it kills them with clean headshots when Steve tells it to. It makes no mistakes, it follows Steve’s command to a fault. It’s always covering Steve’s back, won’t let anything happen to its handler.

It’s the easiest thing in the world. Thanks to the medicine the Asset can’t possibly screw this up.

Until the mission is nearly over and they’re the first to catch up to the high ranking Hydra member.

“Surrender yourself. It’s over.” Steve says in his best Captain America voice.

The man downs the glass of whiskey and puts it back on the desk. “Took you long enough, little thing.” The General isn’t looking at Steve, he’s looking at the Asset with a smile on his face and a finger on the trigger to activate the lock-down.

In hindsight, the Asset should have expected that Hydra’s drugs weren’t strong enough. It snapped so many times, killed so many of them, more than it killed **for** them.

  


* * *

 

“Soldier, stop! Don’t hurt him!”

The Asset freezes for a moment. But it wants and wants and wants to hurt this man! And it snaps, disobeys, moves. A high-pitched laugh bubbles from his chest as Bucky realizes: “Sorry, Steve. Apparently I lied. You’re not my handler after all.”

Their eyes meet and in the next instant they’re enemies and it’s the Helicarrier all over again.

“Please, don't make me do this.”

“Oh, come on Steve, just this last time, promise. I won’t kill him.” He singsongs and snickers in delight as he wrestles Steve to the ground. “I’ll just torture him to an inch of his life.” Sweat is rolling over Bucky’s too hot skin in thick beads and his heart is pounding away like it’s going to burst from the strain of forcing his friend down. “You can have the kill if you like. He’ll be begging for it. Would that be consensual murder?” He can’t hold back a barking laugh at the thought and the tremor wrecking his whole body causes him to lose control over Steve’s arms. The world spins out of axis when his friend seizes his weakness - and isn’t that a funny though? The Winter Soldier losing a fight because he laughed – and flips Bucky on his back so Steve is crowding him with the whole bulk of his insanely muscled body, keeping his hands restrained in a relentless grip.

“Stop it, soldier, now!”

“Steve, Stevie.” He’s grinning and panting while he fights against the hold. “Captain America, the hero who sacrificed everything.” He mocks in his best imitation of a newsreader from the thirties until his voice dissolves into giggling and he starts anew. “You’re so bad at being a hero. Nice gesture, though, sacrificing SHIELD to take Hydra down. But none of your noble sacrifices was ever enough. Not in 1945 and not in 2014.” With a last smirk to challenge Steve’s bitter gaze, Bucky flicks his bionic arm and breaks his grip with the doubled strength of the alien energy source. He doesn’t go further than that. How could he when Steve’s looking down at him with so much hurt and terror in his eyes? Just lifts his metal arm to his face to caress over his cheeks, biting his lips at the sight of blue lightning crawling over his face and leaving red welts on his unmarred skin.

“Bucky, stop.” He whispers and makes Bucky laugh like he told the world’s best joke.

Well, he did. Only when the Winter Soldier is on his worst behavior he gets to be called Bucky by Steve. The irony nearly kills him.

“You think **I’m** Bucky? You look at me and you see **your** Bucky? Don’t be ridiculous, Steve. **Your** Bucky would never do this to you.” And with those words he clamps his metal hand around Steve’s throat and squeezes hard. He’s crossing the last line and he can’t make himself stop. It should terrify him, instead he’s excited to be reckless, to burn the bridges behind him. To run towards an abyss and not even stop when his feet don’t hit the ground anymore. He can’t ever be good enough for Steve, he might as well stop trying. “Sometimes I think you like getting punched.” To show Steve that there’s nothing left of his Bucky but a grotesque, demonized version of everything he once was, Bucky lets go just to hit him against the head and Steve drops to the ground with a silent gasp.

_“Maybe one day I’ll sock your face when you give me an order and we can both laugh about it.”_ Well, at least one of them is laughing.

Bucky pushes the heavy body off him and stands up in one graceful motion, ignoring the searing pain in his body, in his head, in his heart.

He steps closer to the man leaning casually against the desk, looking smug like he just won his bet in a dogfight.

“You proud of the monster you made?”

His white teeth glint in the shadow as the General curls his lips into a fatherly smile. “Yes, little thing, I’m so proud of you.”

And Bucky mirrors his grin, stretches it even wider in satisfaction. He can’t wait to taste his flesh, to eat him alive. Hours of fun.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, at least he's not bent on killing Steve anymore :)  
> I'm planning a happy end, so no worries. I just have no idea how that will work...
> 
> For an acoustic representation of Bucky's mind search for the song "Knochenfräse" by Weena Morloch (I could only find a [sample](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Knochenfr%C3%A4se-Explicit/dp/B00SKG6SPM), sorry :c)


	2. you’re in my head

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is too easy, fighting and hurting and not giving a damn. There are no consequences anymore, nothing left to lose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky’s kind of a dick, sorry. He’ll get better - that’s what Steve thinks, anyway.
> 
> suggested songs:  
> [“Tess” by Fractional](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcMx-kpFRAs)  
> [“Black Wave, Bad Vibrations” by Arcade Fire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_v_7ZO8ojw)
> 
> special suggestion:  
> [“Mercury” by GHOSTEMANE](https://soundcloud.com/ghostemane/ghostemane-mercury-retrograde)  
> 

  


* * *

  


“Come back to me, little thing.”

Bucky’s grin falls and he growls, deep and angry, as he closes the distance between them and grabs the man by his hair.

“I can see your suffering.” He’s forced to look at Bucky at an awkward angle when his head gets yanked back to expose his throat.

“You broke me.” Bucky replies darkly and shoves him up against the desk.

“And I put you back together.” The General reminds with a gentle voice.

Bucky closes his eyes for a second at the sound of the disgustingly familiar tone, before he decides he has heard enough and pulls a knife. He’s here to take revenge on his handler, not to listen to the poison that raped his mind for too many years.

“You’re falling apart. You can’t go on like this.” His voice stays steady even when the blade nips his throat. “You **need** to be wiped. You need to be reconditioned. I know you-“ Bucky can see him working through the pain as his skin parts under sharp metal. “I know you want it. You begged me so many times, little thing.”

“No.” Bucky growls, but his voice breaks half way. He can’t tell if it’s fear or anger that runs down his spine in cold shivers. He freezes up, torn between the desire to cower down, be a good boy so he won’t get punished, or to let the rage take over and make sure the General can’t ever hurt him again.

“I understand your pain. After all you’ve done, all the people you’ve killed. You know you won’t ever be good enough for him. He’s the icon of a nation, a hero to the people, savior of the world.”

Bucky doesn’t even flinch when the General strokes over his cheek and closes his eyes with his hand. He presses the knife deeper but his fingers are trembling.

“To him you’re just an ugly stain on his clean slate. Just an obligation to his Bucky. It’s him he wants, childhood friend and war hero, not you, never you. But I do. I’ll keep you, I’ll care for you, I’ll make sure you’ll never have to remember.”

Never remember the people he killed. Never remember hurting Steve. Never remember what it feels like to be broken and deficient. Make it all go away. “Please… wipe me.” The quiet, hoarse plea spills easily from his lips, like it has a hundred times before.

“When Steve wakes up again, think what will happen to you. You disobeyed him, you hurt him. It’s all your fault. He’s done with you. He’ll hand you over to the government. And they’ll be so excited. A new plaything, a super-soldier. You know how the doctors like to experiment, to cut you open, to see how far they can go until you break. Steve won’t lift a finger to save you.”

Bucky whimpers and his breathing grows labored as the memories flash before his eyes. The past that’s going to become his future.

The General’s voice is closer now, whispers into his ears, tender, intimate. “I already know everything about you. What you need, what you are, who you want. Come back to me, little thing, and I’ll make you forget him.”

Forget Steve.

“No!” Rage flaring up in his bones, burning fire through his veins, pushing, forcing, demanding him to attack. “He is mine!” He growls, shifts the knife with new found strength, turns it and slices down, tearing through his chest, through cloth and skin. The General screams in pain, but it’s not enough, not with this one. The others Bucky could watch and their sounds of agony smothered the rage inside him. This one is different, there’s no control, no finesse to Bucky stabbing and hacking away at the man who violated and tortured him into submission. He throws the knife away and tears the General apart with his bare hands and teeth. Drowns his senses completely in the spray of warm blood, the crisp sound of bones breaking and the soft, yielding flesh in his mouth.

  


* * *

 

The first time he hears it, is when he gnaws on a piece of flesh ripped from the General’s cheekbones. A quiet gasp and the sound of suppressed retching. Bucky looks up from where he was nearly oblivious to his surroundings while feeding on the still twitching and groaning body.

Steve is sitting half upright leaned against the wall, watching him horrified and pale faced. When their eyes meet, Bucky says with something akin to concern: “Look away, Steve.”

But Steve steels his features, at least he tries, juts out his chin and looks ready to keel over. “You gotta stop, Buck.” He pleads with a hoarse voice.

Bucky spits out a mouth full of blood onto the floor and snarls at him. “Don’t be such a wimp. He had it coming.”

Soon enough, Steve retches again and finally throws up and Bucky has to close his eyes in concentration to squelch his own nausea so he won’t do the same. When he looks back down at the shredded corpse growing cold beneath him, he doesn’t recognize it anymore. Just flesh torn apart into distorted lumps, a red skull without human features and he abandons it in favor of crawling over to Steve. This time he knows not to search for forgiveness he doesn’t deserve anyway. “Sorry to be such a disappointment.” Bucky says with bitterness and a crooked grin. “I tried for you, I tried to be human, to be your Bucky, but...” He waves vaguely at Steve’s head wound and winces as he jerks away. “Well you’ve seen my failure. I’m broken, Steve, there’s nothing I can do about it. I wish I could be good enough for you, but I simply won’t ever be.”

To his irritation Steve shakes his head in a slightly dazed movement. “You’ll always be my Bucky. You don’t have to try at all.” His voice is wrecked from acid, still he sounds so earnest like he believes in what he says.

“Steve, please. Do us both a favor and stop lying to yourself. Your Bucky died a long time ago. I’m not him.” He tries to sound vicious, but it turns desperate under blue, vexed eyes. For once he’ll come clean to Steve. So he’ll understand. So he **has** to understand no matter how stubborn of an idiot he is.

“Bucky…” Steve looks like a lost child, desperately clinging to the sleeve of the next best person because they resemble its parent. And the next best person is the Winter Soldier resembling his friend. He couldn’t have made a worse choice.

“You’re asking for too much.” He snaps at the blonde and leans forward. “Bucky Barnes is dead, gone, erased. Do you need me to punch it into your mulish excuse for a brain?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push you. We can take it slow. We can… We can go away, to some island or, I don’t know, Canada. You don’t have to fight or kill or…” He pauses his rambling as his eyes flicker to the pile of gore behind Bucky. “We have all the time in the world to figure this out.”

“Now you’re just being cruel.” Bucky accuses him with furrowed eyebrows and crawls over Steve’s legs to crowd him closer against the wall, even though the blonde recoils trying to keep some distance. “You know as well as I do, Hydra won’t stop hunt-”

“Captain, Soldier, come in. We’ve managed to disengage the lock-down. What’s your status?” They suddenly hear the Black Widow speaking through their earpieces.

Bucky grabs Steve wrist as he lifts his hand to answer her and asks him sharply: “You want me hunted by the CIA too?”

Steve hesitates, his eyes roaming over Bucky’s bloodstained face in search of whatever sign he thinks he needs to find. Bucky growls silently at him. Of course he can’t and won’t force Steve to cover for him, but he can’t help but vent his frustration somehow. If the government decides Captain America isn’t sufficient to control the Winter Soldier anymore, he’ll have to leave Steve. He really, really doesn’t want to leave Steve. Without Steve all his pathetic memories are useless, without Steve there’s no point remembering anything before Hydra, it might as well have been nothing more than a silly, desperate dream. And Steve is still looking at him with an expression Bucky can’t possibly read and he’s hesitating like he’s waiting for something to change and Bucky needs him to make up his fucking mind.

Finally Steve shakes his head minutely with all kinds of emotions flickering over his face until it settles on determination so uncertain and hollow it’s painfully transparent how much it takes of him to stay loyal to the Winter Soldier.

“He blew himself up before we could get to him. I’ll clean this up. No one needs to know.” He tells Steve and lets go of his hand with a warning squeeze.

Steve’s voice is flat and hesitant as he reports back to the rest of the team, hopefully it’ll be lost through the noise of the com.

Bucky gets up and looks down on himself. He looks like the villain from a horror movie, drenched in buckets of blood from his victims. It shouldn’t be a problem, he’s used to this, Hydra trained him to get away with murder. The Black Widow might not be fooled but he has to make sure Agent 13 doesn’t realize he’s lost control again and Steve **let** him.

Again he has to fight off the nausea as he walks past the corpse into the General’s private bathroom, where he finds a first aid kit for aspirin and a basin to wash off the blood. With quick, familiar movements he strips the top layer of his gear and soaks it in water. After that he scrubs over his skin and rinses out his mouth trying to ignore the blank, cruel eyes staring back at him through the mirror.

_“They fear you like death, little thing. Now hold still.”_

The monster on the other side bares its teeth at him, all sharp like a predator’s, lips torn bloody, eyes blackened, cold and lost. A puppet preened into a nightmare.

_“Make an example of them.”_

_Blood covering every surface in the room. The TV, the couch, the table, the toys. Everything broken and torn apart. Corpses like rag dolls scattered about, twisted and bent. And the screams, and the screams have long gone silent still echo in its ears._

_“I want it to look like the devil himself took their souls.”_

He wrenches his eyes away and slips quickly back into his wet gear, his fingers frustratingly numb and clumsy. In his haste he stumbles back into the office, spares Steve barely a glance before his eyes settle on the mutilated corpse and he can convince himself of the General’s death.

_“You’re mine, little thing. Your sole purpose is to obey me.” And the asset sinks to its knees, docile, obedient. A weapon to be used, a monster to be feared, heartless like no human could ever be._

Smoke and fire, so much blood on his hands that it seeped into his skin like ink dying him red to his bones until it wouldn’t even come off if he skinned himself alive. His lips curl back over his teeth as he spits onto the remains of the General and stomps his boot into his skull. A dull crack of breaking bones and the squelching sound of brain matter being squashed under the hard sole resound hollow in his chest.

He walks over to where Steve is half leaning against the wall on disconcertingly unsteady feet and slings his arm unceremoniously over his shoulder, resolutely ignoring when he shies away. The wound where Bucky hit him isn’t bleeding anymore but a swollen mess of reddened skin with indentations matching the plating of a metal fist. “Next time, don’t get in my way if you’re not prepared to fight me for real.”

“We could have gotten valuable information about Hydra if we’d captured him alive.” Steve points out with his voice sounding more steady by the minute.

“I’m sure he would have sung for us like a happy, little bluebird.”

Back in the corridor he leads Steve another ten steps before he lets him sink against the wall and circles back to casually throw two grenades into the General’s office.

“What did he do to you?” He hears Steve ask carefully, expecting an answer explaining Bucky’s violent outburst, justify it, make it rational.

_“All his new friends, a pretty woman in his arms. Did he even look at you after the serum, when everyone cheered at him and celebrated his heroic deeds?”_

“He... nothing. Sticks and stones, nothing serious.” He replies coldly after the explosion, eyes fixed on the burned marks on the floor. Or rather, Bucky doesn’t want to touch those memories, let alone put them into words.

“Please, talk to me. You can’t bottle up what Hydra did to you. You’re obviously remembering a lot of bad stuff and trying to deal with it on your own. But you don’t have to.”

_It kneels at his feet, fingers in his hands. Today he doesn’t have a knife and it still believes every word coming from his lips. “He never wanted your help. He just used you like a dog, his ugly, little bitch. The idiot who gladly followed him into the jaws of death.”_

Bucky’s breathing picks up and his lips twitch in irritation, his hands curl into fists with anger. In the next moment he’s right in front of Steve and shoves him hard against the wall. “There’s nothing to talk about, Steve.” He spits his name out like an insult. “I didn’t survive Hydra because I cried about my fucking feelings. The only way to deal with this fucked up brain of mine is to wipe it. You want that? I can do it right now so you won’t have to deal with this mess anymore.” Bucky snarls and gives him a menacing glare.

“No, you need real help, people who know how to treat trauma. A place where you can process what Hydra did to you, so you can move on. You can’t keep going like this. It’s destroying you.” Steve’s voice is shaky as he struggles to keep his emotions in check, to suppress his fear of the Winter Soldier.

Bucky stares at him with wild eyes and nearly balks away. He shouldn’t be so shocked by Steve’s words, the General told him it would happen. He disobeyed him, he hurt him, of course Steve is done with him and is going to hand him over to the government. If Bucky doesn’t cling to his anger now, he’ll be a useless, shaking mess on the ground. He hides his trembling fingers by tightening his grip on Steve’s collar and steels his voice, cold and mocking. “Sure, hand me over to the CIA, Steve. I should be locked up. I desperately need more people poking and slicing through my brain. Please, I just can’t get enough of being experimented on, manipulated and controlled. I need another hell, I need the pain and the lies and the torture.” His face is burning, his body trembling with anger and fear alike. “After all I’ve done I deserve it. I’m the villain in this story, not Hydra, not some Nazi-cult. **I** should be stuck on a pole in the middle of Time Square. Best thing is, I would even survive it, could twitch and scream for weeks until I die.” Really, it’s the least he deserves for all the horrors he’s committed, but he’s so, so afraid of the pain.

“No, Bucky, plea-”

Bucky clamps his metal hand down on Steve’s throat, just barely giving him enough room to breathe, and any other word turns into frantic gasps for air. He doesn’t want to know what Steve’s going to say next, he doesn’t care. He’s so tired of it all. When he let Hydra capture and wipe him, he thought they could fix him. Instead they might have fucked him up even more if that were possible, proving once and for all that he can’t ever go back.

“I am the Winter Soldier. You don’t know me, I don’t know you. End of the line.”

Let him go. Bucky’s got no right claiming to be the person who laid a hand on Steve’s bony shoulder and told him, they’ll stick together ‘til the end of the line. Now Steve can be free of a promise that was destined to be broken as soon as it was made. It’s easier that way, for both of them.

When the CIA takes him away, he’ll kill them all so they can’t contain him, can’t experiment on him, can’t use him like Hydra did. This time he’ll fight until they put him down. It’s the best end the Winter Soldier can hope for.

Or he’ll give up again and become a mindless puppet for another century. Because he’s a spineless, pathetic coward, choosing submission just to avoid a little pain.

All his anger slips from his grasp, water through his fingers, a thin veil torn away to leave behind a crying child, a little thing. Before he can cling to Steve for undeserved comfort against the oncoming panic attack, he suffocates his fear by discipline drilled into him for decades. It’s okay, he has a plan, nothing can go wrong. All he has to do is attack and kill when they come for him, as easy as breathing for the Winter Soldier. When he lets go and steps away from Steve, he manages to not even cringe as his audible gasp for air reminds him that all he ever does is hurt and disappoint him.

“We need to leave.” He decides, as much a necessity as a welcomed distraction from the emptiness growing in his chest. The middle of a military base is a bad place to deal with emotions anyway. Since Bucky ruined their mission and the lock-down has been disengaged, there’s no reason to stick around and wait for hostile reinforcement to catch up.

Steve rubs tentatively over the sore skin of his throat and nods with reluctance. His mouth opens and closes like he wants to say something but thinks better of it.

Bucky gives him a last warning glance before he slings the rifle from his back over his head and takes point.

  


* * *

 

To his relief Steve falls into his efficient Captain America mode until they’re far away from the base, in the woods on their way to the rendezvous. Just as the Quinjet appears between the trees, Steve speaks up. “Whatever happens, I’ll be right there with you.”

Here in the relative safety of the night and the wilderness, Bucky lets his mask of blankness slip away, feeds of the sheer infinite fire in his chest where Hydra carved out everything else but fear and anger. With a quick move the rifle is slung over his back again, his hands free now to shove Steve backwards and it’s so frustrating to feel him letting himself being pushed around, so unfamiliar and all kinds of wrong. “That’s a stupid thing to say and you know that.”

“It’s not! I mean it. I wasn’t there before, but I’m here now.”

He shoves him again and Steve gives no resistance whatsoever, irritating the hell out of Bucky, because for every action there should be a reaction, a violent reaction, order through pain. Instead Steve is just giving way, eyes fixed on him with a dedication Bucky can’t and doesn’t want to understand. “Fuck you. Fuck you and your self-sacrificing bullshit.” He growls at him, pushing another couple of steps until Steve hits a tree, the shield on his back meeting the wood with a dull clank. Still he makes no move to defend himself. His whole posture accepting, strong and unbroken, everything Bucky isn’t. They are miles apart, divided by seventy years of one killing and the other sleeping. “You’re the one who took the easy way out. Crashing the plane into the water, pretending you had no other choice.” Steve’s eyes widen, so open and vulnerable, child’s play to break him, snap his neck, a bleeding heart laid bare for Bucky to squash between his metal fingers. The Winter Soldier knows how to hurt. He only knows how to hurt. “The serum didn’t change a goddamn thing about you, you’re still a useless waste of space. You can’t save anyone.” He watches Steve crumble right in front of him and feels euphoric with the knowledge that he can drag America’s national icon down with him. “Nobody needs you. **I** don’t need-” Cut the strings, burn the bridges. “I don’t-” His voice is breaking up, it’s such an obvious lie he can’t even bring himself to say it. “Fight me! Goddammit, Steve, you’re such a useless coward. Sick of body and mind. What would your Bucky say if he could see you like this? He was always so annoyed when he had to finish the fights you started.” It’s funny how these are the words that get Steve’s face to close up and that’s a wound he can twist a knife into. “You know, he was just as weak as you are. He tried to kill himself so many times, it was pathetic how he never could go through with it. It was the **easy** way out and he was still too fuckin’ afraid to take it.”

“Don’t talk like that.” Finally he can see the familiar fire in Steve’s eyes.

“Come on, fight the bullies. The Winter Soldier is the biggest of them all.” Bucky opens his arms wide and laughs at him. “Put me down.” He feels himself fray it the edges, control slipping again. This is too easy, fighting and hurting and not giving a damn. There are no consequences anymore, nothing left to lose.

“No. I’m not gonna fight you. Just calm down and we can talk ab-”

That’s really not what he wants to hear. He wants Steve to fight him, to see that Bucky’s fucked up and cannot be saved. Just like before, he grabs his throat with an angry snarl and suffocates the words Steve deems more precious than his fists.

“And here I was hoping for hot make-up-sex.” The Black Widow appears out of the darkness with a gun pointed at Bucky and simply shoots him, two times before he can let go of Steve and pull his own weapon. But it gets snatched from his hand immediately and his arm twisted behind his back. “Don’t you dare.” He hears Steve’s warning right beside his ear.

“Glad to see you draw a line **somewhere**.” The Black Widow drawls and to her surprise Bucky agrees with a small laugh.

Pain is missing where bullets should have pierced his flesh, instead there’s a numb vertigo pulling him slowly down into an abyss, knocking his senses awry as he feels himself lifted up before he can fall.

  


* * *

 

_Bucky, come on! There are men laying down their lives._

_“Steve?”_

_His thoughts turn slowly. Ice crawling over stone._

_How about you?_

_It’s quiet. Somebody is crying._

_ „Доклад миссии, солдат.” _

_Birds in the trees, leaves rustling in the wind._

_The Sun high in the sky, the stench of decay heavy in the air._

_Adults and children, gutted and torn apart._

_ „Доклад миссии!” _

_You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?_

_“Steve, I don’ wanna do this anymore.”_

_Blood on his hands, there’s always blood on his hands._

_The weight of his gun a dull pressure on his temple._

_Eyes looking up to the sky. Cloudless. Summerblue._

_“Steve abandoned you.”_

_A promise broken a lifetime ago._

_“He left you to rot away in hell. You’re alive to return the favor.”_

_Find and kill Steve._

_“If you slaughter the people he cares about he’ll come for you.”_

_Steve will come back to him._

  


* * *

 

“Soldier! Hey!”

_„Это очень раздражает.“_

Acid and copper fill his mouth and flow over his lips as his stomach convulses.

“Wake up.”

He tries to press his hands over his mouth, but they won’t move, weight down and chained. A desperate gasp for air lets him choke on his own bile, his lungs start to burn from acid as he coughs and retches.

_„Не прикасайтесь к нему, просто оставьте его.“_

Strong hands seize him, push him down, pull him up and all he can think of is that they’ll hurt him if he doesn’t go pliant, but another tremor wrecks his body, cuts his line of thought and he jerks away and falls. Meeting the hard floor face first, but his body is half numb and what is pain anyway if you’re suffocating? With a broken groan he rolls sluggishly onto his side, dark hair plastered to his sweat-damp skin, black spots gaping in the blurry image of his vision, and curls up into a tight, shivering ball. The smell of vomit _as it sits at the table, shocked, pretending shock, and watches its mission die from poison, hopes his mission dies, because otherw-_ And he’s tired, _and it’s tired and_ keeps his mouth shut _but they force a tube down its throat and repeat it after it thro-_ Bile mixed with blood and torn flesh, _burned bones, body parts scattered about, exper-_ Lips forced shut, don’t make noise, stay a ghost or they’ll- On the floor, voices and _screamed orders and its ribs being broken._ Malfunction. Reset required.

He freezes up, goes blank, stops breathing altogether. His body twitches, stomach still constricting causing vomit to steadily leak from his half opened mouth while his lungs feel like they’re bursting and shriveling up at the same time with the lack of oxygen. It took Hydra a while to realize just how long the Winter Soldier could hold his breath. Waterboarding changed after that.

When his insides have finally calmed down he’s half gone, cold, numbing darkness tugging softly but demanding at the edges of his mind and he’s far too tired to fight the merciful oblivion. Eyes wide open, rigid thing made of plastic, a doll neatly wrapped in ice to put high on a shelf, gathering dust for the next eternity or two. It’s a calming thought.

“Come on, breathe.”

It’s still disgustingly easy to follow that voice. He breathes, slow and controlled, but keeps drifting further away with every exhale, loses time like he used to for decades. There’s no need for him to be present, to think and remember. No need to stay awake with the nightmares of his memories, or to fall asleep to them either, stays carefully balanced in between in the empty corner of his mind where they can’t find him. Here he can just rest for a while and escape the guilt gnawing at the rotten marrow of his bones.

Strong arms belonging to Steve lift his limp body up and place it back onto the makeshift cot. There is care in his touch, but it’s also tense and hasty and Bucky knows Steve has nothing left to give, neither acceptance nor forgiveness. Bucky’s had his second chance and he fucked it up spectacularly, caused enough damage. And despite that he’s already planning to attack Steve’s friends, just not now when it’ll be of no use to him. He’ll wait until they land and some CIA agents or whatever make their appearance. Then escape into the anonymity of the city to leave everything behind.

When caring hands brush the hair out of his face and wipe away the bile from his lips with a soft, moist tissue Bucky barely manages to keep perfectly still despite his confusion.

  


* * *

 

[154712:21102014:user query:C.I.A. NYC database:Winter Soldier...  
                scanning...]  
[155145:21102014:user query:positive…  
                downloading...  
                               log detail: “14:58:11_10212014:WS contingency plan 05 request: reason=CA unable to control WS, WS assaulted CA until sedated, WS terminated mission objective GAL; extraction=NYC AvT landing platform 1800-2000 10212014”  
                               log detail: “15:04:45_10212014:WScp05 approved”  
                               log detail: “15:41:51_10212014:WScp05.03 initiated: assigned=ground team A,B,E, close air support team C; HOO=Agent deSantis; extraction=NYC AvT landing platform 1800-2000 10212014; MOT=CC#36; POC=Raft”]

  


* * *

 

[182251:21102014:connection reestablished]  
[182252:21102014:user query...  
                scanning...  
                downloading...  
                               log detail: “17:02:31_10212014:WScp05.07 standing by”  
                               log detail: “18:00:00_10212014:WScp05.08 phase 1”  
                               log detail: “18:17:12_10212014:WScp05.26 phase 2”]  
[182253:21102014:msg from unknown…  
                log detail: “Heads up.”]

  


* * *

 

[190834:21102014:log detail: “19:08:33_10212014:WScp05.132 phase 3”]

Bucky sighs inwardly. He’s dreaded this moment for the last three hours. Though he’ll stick to his decision not to submit himself to the CIA, he’s tired of fighting. All he wants is to be alone, to wallow in self-pity or at least have his medicine. He doesn’t want to kill and hurt and run and he really, really wants Steve- The Winter Soldier puts his foot down and suffocates the trail of whining, he can’t afford to be weak now. There’s a mission to accomplish.

A small jolt goes through the Quinjet as it lands and the ramp descends in slow motion. The calm before the storm.

“Get up, Soldier.”

He obeys her command without hesitation, sits up, eyes staring at nothing. It’s disturbingly comfortable to behave like a puppet, familiar to his body like an well-worn jacket. It would be so easy to stay like this, let them take him, do whatever they want with him drifting at the corners of his mind.

At the edge of his vision he can see the black-clad agents ready and waiting on the landing platform. He doesn’t realize he’s growling deep in his throat until everyone in the jet takes a step away from him and three guns are pointed between his eyes.

“Please, don’t do this.”

His nearly chokes on the growl as he snaps his head to the side and stares wide-eyed at Steve. “They’re going to take me away.” He would be surprised and ashamed of his timid, childish voice if he had a thought left to care about it.

“They’re going to help you get better.” Steve meets his eyes only for a second before he looks away.

Bucky gives him a rueful smile. “He said you’d do that.” So this is goodbye then. “Don’t do anything stupid after I’m gone.”

The metal arm whirs aggressively under the strain of breaking the cuffs covering his forearms, biting deep into his flesh as they warp and tear. He’s already moved forward, smashing one arm against Agent 13’s head while the Black Widow ducks away from his left, giving Hawkeye a clear line of sight to shoot.

But he never pulls the trigger. Instead they stare at each other, gun between them pointed at his head, the only area where Hawkeye could do any damage, since the metal arm covers most of his side. Bucky’s just about to roll his eyes at him, as a kick to the hollow of his knees forces him to break his fall with an awkward backwards roll propelling him hard against the walls of the Quinjet. Before he can recover he’s being pulled up and suddenly confronted with a pair of angry looking, blue eyes. “What do you mean ‘after you’re gone’?”

Bucky bares his teeth at him and snarls: “I mean, they’re not taking me alive.”

“They’re not going to hurt you. They’re not Hydra.”

Bucky gives him an irritated look, he has neither any patience for Steve’s naivety nor the time. “Remember your last employer?” He just asks as he frees himself from Steve’s grip by quickly twisting his arms and leaping to the side, out of his reach.

The two dozen agents on the landing platform have their guns aimed at him and he doesn’t plan on disappointing them. Flicks his arm so the blue energy sparks up threateningly between the black metal plates and runs straight into the fray with a manic grin on his face. And he can see how they’re afraid of him, how they clutch their weapons just a bit harder, fingers twitching on the triggers, feet shuffling half a step back. They have to shoot him if they want to survive this. Have to put him down.

In the next moment his charge comes to a sudden halt when he gets hauled back by his collar. He blinks confused as he stumbles backwards and suddenly Steve’s standing between him and the CIA teams, arms held up an a pacifying gesture, body tense with the anticipation of a fight.

“Get out of my way.” Bucky’s eyes flicker shortly to the agents behind him, weapons still pointed at him and therefore also slightly at Steve, and he takes a hesitant step backwards.

“I’m not letting you do this.”

He barks out an empty laugh as he edges further away. “What? You’re not letting them kill me, but it’s okay if they lock me up, experiment on me and use me like Hydra did?” He could have punched Steve and would have gotten a less shocked reaction.

To Bucky’s surprise he turns around towards the CIA. “You’re not taking him.” And it feels all wrong, because the General said, Steve won’t help him.

Meanwhile Agent 13 has gotten back on her feet and hustled through the agents. “We had an agreement, Captain. As long as you can control him, he can stay.” The gun in her hand is pointed towards the ground, an unmistakable threat nonetheless. But Bucky has only eyes for the unguarded back right in front of him, close enough to touch, close enough to break his spine with one well-aimed punch. “He had his chance and he failed it. The CIA will take him in. We can provide the qualified personnel and suitable environment he needs. This doesn’t have to get any worse.”

“That’s not an option. You saw what he tried to do. He’d rather be killed than come with you.”

“It seems like he doesn’t want to stay with you either, Steve.” The Black Widow suddenly appears. “So, Soldier, what do **you** want?” She asks Bucky and he has to bite his tongue to refrain from spitting at her face. He’s had enough of people pretending to give him a choice. Unsurprisingly the only one to take her question seriously is Steve who’s shoulders tense, bracing for a blow.

The sight drains all the fight out of Bucky’s veins. This isn’t about him, this is about Steve. “I’m not your responsibility. I’m not the person you want, just a stranger.” He mumbles, barely audible for anyone but Steve. “Let me go.” He chokes out the words almost impossible to say since it’s the last thing he **ever** wants Steve to do. This time Bucky won’t survive the fall.

And maybe Steve is aware of that, because he decides with a voice close to breaking: “He stays with me.”

“Sooner or later he’ll have to stand trial for the crimes he committed.” Another black-clad woman speaks up. “He can’t hide behind your back forever.”

“He has done nothing to deserve any punishment.” Steve claims confidently and squares his shoulders. But Bucky can see in the just slightly crooked line of his back that he’s exhausted and irritated.

“He’s worked as an assassin for the soviet union for decades and after that for a terrorist organization. He’s killed over two dozen people we know of and probably hundreds more.”

“He was tortured and brainwashed into submission, for God’s sake. James Barnes almost died for this country. He’s a hero.” Steve argues vehemently.

Bucky can’t hold the hollow giggle bubbling from his chest any longer. “A hero?” He backs away from them, spreading his arms wide as they all turn to look at him when he walks towards the entrance of the tower right through the middle of the group of agents who scatter apart to take a new formation. “After all the people I’ve tortured and killed? After everything I’ve done?” He laughs and spins around once, watching the muzzles of their guns following his path. “I’m untouchable.” The mocking tone of his voice makes it sound less desperate, at least to his own ears. But he’s not the insane person here, he’s not the one calling the Winter Soldier a bloody, fucking hero.

“You take one step out of this tower and you’ll get a bullet between your eyes.” The agent calls behind him.

“Make sure to double tap.” Bucky counters half-heartedly while he gets blood on the door dripping from his arm where the sharp edges of the cuff tore through the skin.

[191225:21102014:user query:positive...  
                log detail: “19:12:22_10212014:WScp05.132 aborted”  
                log detail: “19:12:23_10212014:Winter Soldier kill order request”]

  


* * *

 

This time Steve catches up with him as Bucky injects himself with the reserve medicine he had hidden in the seams of his tactical gear. Just before the last drops can join his bloodstream Steve is right in front of him and pries the syringe from his metal fingers with one hand and grips his shoulder with the other like he’s afraid Bucky might swoon at any moment. Bucky lets himself be pushed back against the wall and gives him a lazy smile, already feeling the silence engulf him and the loathsome, useless emotions subside. He would have taken it much sooner if he hadn’t been tied up. Would have obeyed Steve’s order and given himself up to the CIA so they could help him or whatever. Steve could be happy right now, one problem off his shoulders.

“What did you take?” He demands to know while turning the tube between his fingers trying to decipher the strange medical code on the label.

“Bet you regret the order to never leave you.” Bucky giggles breathlessly instead of an answer and tries to ignore the irritating once over Steve gives him.

“Yeah, I shouldn’t have forced you to stay with me, but now you’ve managed that yourself just fine.” Then suddenly he asks: “Are you on drugs?”

When Hydra injected the Asset with drugs it had screamed as its rage was taken away, now it just lets itself drift with the harsh pull. Edges sharpen, colors turn bleak, the world becomes clean and empty. “Of course I am, sir. Otherwise I tend to malfunction, as you’ve seen.”

Steve swears under his breath. “You were on drugs on the mission, but they stopped working towards the end.”

“Didn’t you enjoy it, sir?” The Asset looks up into his eyes with a provocative grin on its lips. “I did everything you wanted. Your very own obedient, little pet.”

Instantly Steve takes a step away from it and the Asset blinks, slightly confused at the loss of contact. “Did Hydra use those drugs on you? Where did you even get them?”

“October 15. I located and took out a Hydra base 700 miles north from here and retrieved a stack of 24 injections.” The mission report falls easily from its lips and only when it’s finished it can grit its teeth in a futile attempt to shut itself up.

Steve takes another step back. “JARVIS, could you please ask Natasha to come here as soon as possible?”

“Of course, sir.”

Neither of them moves or says anything until the Black Widow arrives three minutes later.

“What’s wrong?” She asks immediately alarmed.

Steve doesn’t look away from the Asset as he tells her: “He took some kind of drug Hydra used to give him to make him submit. I think he can’t disobey me right now. I can’t- I don’t know what to do.”

She considers the Asset for a moment before she shrugs. “It actually might be a good sign. He must have known he would have to obey you. Meaning, he trusts you. A lot. Just keep any communication he could perceive as an order to a bare minimum and do what you think he’d be comfortable with.”

“No, he hates- I don’t think… Okay… I guess that makes sense. But why did he take them? Why now?”

“It could be the familiarity of the feeling or something like emotional stability. He was kind of slipping out there. Provoking them to kill him.” She sighs and adds more softly: “We should secure him before the effect wears off. We don’t know how he’ll react once that happens.”

Steve gives her a slow, thoughtful nod. “Would you help me search his room later? He has another twenty-two injections hidden somewhere.”

“Of course. Now come on, we’ll find him a pink, plush room filled with fluffy unicorns. Hydra probably didn’t have one of those.”

  


* * *

 

“I’m sorry I have to ask this now, but with the Soldier like this I don’t think it can wait any longer. What happened between you two and Lukin?” The Black Widow wants to know once they’re all sitting on the floor covered in pink fake-fur.

“I learned to embrace my inner girl years ago.” Was Stark’s only comment when he'd showed them the room. The Black Widow must have known.

Steve doesn’t answer her right away and the Asset wonders shortly if it’ll have to protect him from any punishment. “We encountered him in the west block of the compound. As far as I know we didn’t trigger the alarm but he seemed to be expecting us.” Steve finally begins. “‘Took you long enough, little thing.’ He said and suddenly the Soldier’s about to attack him. I... I ordered him to stop, but he just told me, he lied and I’m not his handler after all. It kind of sounded like he just realized it. Then we fought and... he hit me unconscious. Next thing I know, the Soldier shouted something at him and then Lukin started to scream as he was being ripped apart.”

The Asset’s eyes flicker to Steve, but nothing in his face tells of a lie. It means Steve didn’t hear it begging to be wiped and very nearly submitting again to the man who had been its handler for a long time during the Cold War. Its breath hitches as it thinks back to the moment where the General asked it to come back to him, promised to make it forget. If he hadn’t made the mistake of offering it to also forget Steve, the Asset is sure it would be the Winter Soldier by now, wiped clean, reconditioned, checked over, cut open for new transmitters, drugged and docile. And Steve would be… It flinches, wide eyes staring at Steve in horror, and gets on its knees, puts its hands behind its head, whimpering and breathing heavy as its fingers claw into its scalp, desperate for any distraction at all. Steve would be dead, killed by its own hands, or worse, Steve would be wiped and cut open and hurt and bleeding and experimented on and-

“What did he do to you?” Above the blood pounding in its ears Steve’s voice is crystal clear.

Though it tries to lock its jaw the words fall from its lips. “He offered to fix me.”

“Give your memories back?” He asks skeptically.

The Asset shakes its head and corrects him. “He offered to make me forget.”

They stay quiet for some time until Steve admits: “I’m glad you refused.”

It wonders if Steve understands what he’s saying. That the Asset chose to remember all the horrors and atrocities it committed only to be able to keep its memories of Steve. “Yeah,” It adds, slightly detached from its own words, “You should be. You’d be dead otherwise.” And its mouth keeps moving, intonation completely void of any emotion. “It’s your fault I’m like this. It’s your fault I have to remember. I can’t be fixed as long as you’re in my head. They burn you away but you always come back and with you all the other memories. I told you when we met. I told you I don’t want to remember you.”

  


* * *

 

The last dozen hours become just another memory that will stay forever untouched like thousands before. There are enough holes in his head stuffed with things he doesn’t want to remember and doesn’t want to talk about.

Steve is hurt and afraid, but that never stopped him. “I know you don’t want to... but we really need to talk. We probably should have talked weeks ago.” He laughs wetly. “You’re remembering. The things you said about yourself…” And in a barely audible whisper he adds: “About me…” Steve doesn't order him to answer and so the Winter Soldier never opens his mouth. He doesn’t say, he’s sorry. Saying sorry doesn’t cut it. Never did.

It’s the last time Steve tries to talk to him and his silence hangs above the Winter Soldier like a death sentence.

He stops trying to be human and starts pretending. It’s easier, just like any other mission. They taught the Winter Soldier how to imitate human behavior until nobody was able to tell the difference. Bucky can’t even do that anymore. Steve notices his awkward behavior, keeps his distance and avoids any physical contact. It breaks up cracks in Bucky’s mind, deep and gashing like they never were healed.

He pretends to sleep a lot, even if that means drifting with the frighteningly void static in his mind or living with the nightmares in the darkness behind his eyelids. But he can’t screw up like this, when nobody’s interacting with him, when nobody expects anything of him. At least lying motionless, curled up in a bed is still something he’s capable of.

_Nothing but snow-covered mountain peaks and the dull gray sky above him. Nothing for miles. He’s all alone when his life bleeds slowly out of him, red rivers meandering through a bed of white crystals. When he takes his last breath, a soft cloud from between his clattering teeth, Bucky should have died peacefully._

“Soldier...”

He opens his eyes to see Steve standing in the door wearing his uniform.

Hesitant and nervous, as if he knows neither of them wants to hear what he’s about to say. “I’m so sorry, I wouldn’t leave if it wasn’t necessary. But they’ve taken children as hostages and I can’t… I’ll be back in two hours.”

He closes his eyes and hears Steve leave after another whispered apology.

When he comes back with bullet holes in his back and a cracked tibia he shrugs it off with the words: “It was either the shield or another child I could carry.”

He pretends he doesn’t care when Steve leaves the next time. But as soon as the Quinjet has taken off, he’s out of bed and crawls through an air duct leaving behind all the fluffy unicorns. The CIA agent’s threat doesn’t bother him much, not when she was so dump to play with open cards and tell him exactly when and where he’s going to be shot. He’s more worried to lose the race against time as he weaves through the traffic towards the airport, almost smiling at the irony that he’s going to steal a jet from the CIA.

This time Steve gets through the mission without a scratch and Bucky lets himself be found later at the Smithsonian, staring at the text beside the grainy photo of his own face. He should sue the museum for the crap they wrote about James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes. They seem to be almost as confused as he is about his year of birth and death.

  


* * *

 

“I’m on it.” The Black Widow says over the com as he thinks the same.

He breathes out slowly. Through the scope he’s watching a walking corpse. Pulls the trigger without a thought and his target hits the pavement as the Black Widow engages the group. Three more mercenaries fall by the time she’s dealt with the rest. Next thing she knows Rumlow attacks her and she has no time to notice anything out of place, barely survives the encounter.

With the smallest motions he corrects his aim to follow Rumlow’s head, finger itching over the trigger for a clean shot. Neither his body armor nor his fancy helmet will protect him against a .50- caliber slug from the Winter Soldier’s favorite gun.

The opportunity never comes and while Rumlow hides in the armored vehicle speeding down the busy roads, Bucky packs his heavy rifle with a few efficient movements and practically jumps down the building he’d been positioned on to sprint with breakneck speed towards where Steve was tossed through the air like a rag doll.

“He’s in an AFV heading north.” Steve’s voice sounds over the com and Bucky nearly topples over in relief hiding behind a corner as he watches the Falcon swoop in to pick Steve up like a predator its prey. He tails them on the ground to a crowded marketplace.

“I got four, they’re splitting up.”

“I got the two on the left.”

“They ditched their gear. It’s a shell game now. One of them has the payload.”

Bucky already knows he won’t be of much use as a sniper firing into the mass of panicking people, so he slings the rife over his back and throws all caution into the wind to follow Steve.

  


* * *

 

He’s standing in the background, just one of too many bystanders, waiting, watching as Captain America and Crossbones exchang blow after blow until Rumlow is beaten, kneeling in the sand and Steve’s looking down on him with imposing anger.

“I think I look pretty good, all things considered.”

“Who’s your buyer?”

“You know, he knew you. Your pal, your buddy, your Bucky.”

“What did you say?”

“He remembered you. I was there. He got all weepy about it. Till they put his brain back in a blender. He wanted you to know something. He said to me, ‘Please tell Rogers. When you gotta go, you gotta go.’” Rumlow smiles and laughs.

Bucky wants so badly for Steve to lose control, to stop holding back, to tear Rumlow apart with his bare hands. To finally act on his rage – no justice, no mercy, no forgiveness anymore. To see Steve avenge his long dead friend.

And so the Winter Soldier does nothing, doesn’t lift a finger to protect Steve, until it’s too late. He’ll never forgive himself.

“And you’re coming with me.”

His own high pitched scream is the first thing he hears after the explosion. Without a conscious though he’s running to the charred figure lying on the ground and throws himself on his knees beside it. “Steve?” His voice is far away, a cry in the middle of a howling storm. Despair shatters his thoughts, he barely comprehends that Steve isn’t moving, isn’t breathing. “Please don’t leave me. You can’t leave me!” He can’t touch Steve, he’s hurt everywhere, black burned skin between the shreds of his blue uniform. “Steve, please.” Something hits his shoulder, but he doesn’t feel it. Someone shouts at him, but doesn’t listen. His world is dying right in front of him and all he can do is watch. The wind howls in his ears as he falls from the train, down, down, down. Steve vanishes in the distance, this time there’s no ice to reunite them, only fire to consume them both.

_“This isn’t a back alley, Steve.”_

Cold spreads from his neck to his head. Blurry vision recedes, the world expands. The Asset blinks awake.

“Soldier, leave, now! There’s a bounty on your head and somebody’s here to take it.” The Black Widow shouts into its face like it’s deaf. “We’ll take care of him. Run!” The Falcon is kneeling beside Steve, talking frantic words into his com.

Another bullet hits its chest and the muted pain spurs it into action.

The Asset flees into a world, void of warmth and light.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> „Доклад миссии, солдат.” - “Mission report, Soldier."
> 
> „Доклад миссии!” - “Mission report!"
> 
> „Это очень раздражает.“ - “This is so annoying.”
> 
> „Не прикасайтесь к нему, просто оставьте его.“ - “Don’t touch it, just leave it be.”
> 
> \---
> 
> You weren't really expecting this to get happier, were you? So… yeah, Scarlet Witch doesn’t exist yet, thus she’s not there to save Steve...  
> And I really, really, really wanted this scene with Rumlow where he isn’t lying when he talks about Steve’s Bucky ^^ You probably saw that one coming x)
> 
> one outtake that sadly didn't make it into the story:  
> “Okay, I just... Nobody really knows what Hydra did to you, so... Do you need to eat human flesh to survive?”  
> “Shit. Why didn’t I think of that? That would have been a perfect excuse.”


	3. this is the monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Just… Just point me at someone who wants to hurt you. I’ll kill them, no questions asked, I’ll kill them all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> suggested songs:  
> [Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Official Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7Ir5icRsZ0)  
> [“Kill for you” by Zolita](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azcW72-e9dg)

 

* * *

 

~~Steve?~~

It kills them. ~~~~

~~He needs to turn back.~~

One after another, quick, almost careless. ~~~~

~~Steve is… Steve is hurt. Steve needs him.~~

Clean headshots when it can’t get close then, later, a silent knife to their throats cutting vocal cords before they can scream. Warm, red liquid soaks through its gloves and paints the skin beneath in its true color. ~~~~

~~He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t have run away. He doesn’t give a shit about people trying to kill him when Steve’s the one who’s dying.~~

The drugs still fresh in its bloodstream carry indifference to its itching fingertips. Lips sewn shut and eyes wide open, blurry colors caught in lines cut decisive and deep into the scene. Its brain stays numb and quiet, running on the forced static which soothes the vast emptiness inside and smothers the cold, blank panic raging beneath, reducing it into the echo of a high pitched scream in the far distance. ~~~~

~~He watched him die. Flesh ripped, burned away, charred black. Was he even breathing? Was he already dead?~~

The Asset is killing off a survivor lying dazed on the floor with a violent kick to his skull when it hears the Quinjet roar through the sky above. Without wasting another thought to check on the rest of the mercenaries, it breaks into a sprint out of the murky alley onto the main street where the wreckage of a red Range Rover is still giving off thick wads of smoke. Looking up it spots the jet as it rapidly gains height and speed flying eastwards, which is the exact opposite direction of the nearest hospital. ~~~~

~~He is dead. He is dead. They couldn’t save him and now he’s already dead.~~

The Asset refuses to think about what that might mean. A harsh gust of wind brings soft, white flakes, floating down to cover the ground in snow. ~~~~

 ~~[1701:msg to sgr_sp...~~  
~~log detail: 53746576653f]~~

~~He failed him and now _he’s falling._~~

“Steve?” Its own voice barely a whisper towards the blue sky. Raw and so, so afraid. Mountains loom at the horizon, peaks like sharp teeth. The Asset blinks, irritated by the crack in the wall that splits its mind and keeps it sane. ~~~~

 _ ~~The wind howling in his ears as the outstretched hand disappears in the distance. An Impossibly deep, gaping abyss growing between their fingertips, a wound that will never heal but bleed them to death. Snow-covered rock rushing past, monochrome and cold. The world slipping farther and farther away as he screams. Not for help, never for help. Screams~~_ ~~to kill the~~ Silence in its head.

The Asset grits its teeth, fighting to gain back control. It needs… It needs an objective, a mission.

_“Leave, now! Run!”_

It shakes its head. It’s wrong. That’s not… that’s not the mission. The Black Widow is not its handler. It stumbles and needs to lean heavily against the wall to stay upright. The itch behind its skull is worse than any mission protocol ever was. The Asset felt it before. On the bridge, on the Helicarrier. Always driving it insane with the memories of a warm smile, a gentle touch clawing at its skin to lay bare the name written into its bones. ~~~~

 ~~The mission is~~ Ste ~~ve! The fucking mission is~~ STEVE! ~~Always was, always will be.~~ Find Steve. Protect “Steve.” It echoes quietly as the wall in its mind begins to crumble, it turns around and makes its way through the city towards the stolen Quinjet.

 

* * *

 

“Is he dead?”

A second of silence on the other end, long enough for the Black Widow to work out a consistent lie. She would never admit if Steve had died. “No. Meet us at the Tower.”

“You’re not flying towards New York.” It counters and it wrecks its brain for any leverage to make her spill. “So where are you taking him?”

“He’s alive. Return to the Tower. You’re a liability.” She answers dryly with too obvious disinterest.

“No! You’re lying, you’re always lying. He...” Its throat closes up as it adds: “He needs me.” But that’s not true. The Asset **knows** , that’s not true.

And the Black Widow does, too. “Stay away from him, Soldier. You’re the last person Steve needs right now. You’ve already done enough damage and I’m sick of you torturing him any further. So you don’t get to see him, you don’t even get... Wait.” The intonation of her voice is low and threatening, cold as ice.

If the Asset could get its hands on her right now, she’d be nothing more than a sack of skin filled with ground bones. Its head begins to spin but it swallows the guilt creeping up its throat back down with practiced ease before it can overwhelm it. Whatever she says is irrelevant, her opinion doesn’t matter, she’s not its handler. Muted voices argue in the background, one of them sounding maybe like Steve? Despite the medicine hope bleeds through the empty static in its mind.

The Black Widow’s voice is tiny, like she’s far away from the phone or covering up the speaker when she disagrees with someone: “No, definitely not... He shouldn’t be...”

There’s rustling in the background, then finally: “Soldier?”

The Asset almost whimpers at the sound of his voice, cracked and warped through the call as it may be. A shiver runs through its whole body as it fights the medicine suppressing the euphoric relief rushing through its veins. “Steve.” It chokes out.

“I need you to listen to me, soldier. I’ll be fine. The doctors are gonna patch me up and I’ll be back at the Tower as soon as possible. Don’t get caught and just lie low for a while until you hear from me again.”

Clear orders. Clear orders from Steve. Orders the Asset is allowed, but never needs to question. Rearranging the world into something simple and bright. “Yes, sir.”

When the call ends it takes the jet off the ground, filled with calm and purpose. The static reduced to a silent buzz without emotions to drown, whispers in the back of its head. If Steve can talk then he can’t be wounded too badly, right? “It’s okay. Everything’s all right. Steve will be fine.”

 

* * *

 

Hours later, when the jet has landed somewhere far north, between snow covered trees, he keeps his mind carefully blank, his hands clamped around the controls and stares ahead into the growing shadows of the empty woods. He stares and thinks about nothing at all. Hydra taught him ignorance while facing the obvious, it’s easy not to think about... not to think about... There’s nothing he needs to think about. He has his orders, he only needs to follow them. Lie low and wait for...

He watched him die.

No, he’s alive! He said to wait for him.

The safe house would be just a short hike up the hill, hidden between the trees. He could lie down, sleep in a bed, maybe eat something, disinfect his wound properly. His weapons need cleaning, they are still smeared with blood, and all his clothes are stiff and grimy, smelling of fear and death. But he can’t leave, he’s waiting for a message from Steve.

As his right hand starts to tremble, fingernails scratch over plastic, he takes a deep breath and wrenches his eyes shut. He wants the medicine back in his veins, because otherwise… The fear crawling up his throat is followed by a soft whimper turning into a helpless scream when it leaves his mouth. This is wrong. Everything is wrong. He watched him die!

He rolls his wounded shoulder so the pain will ward off the unbidden panic circling him like vultures their prey, but instead his mind decides to take him straight to hell. The flames spreading, blazing bright yellow and red, scalding air and smoke, engulfing the two men in death. Steve’s body flung through the air, tumbling across the sand until it comes to lie motionless and contorted. His front burned black, the uniform torn apart, flesh beneath molten and blistered. Himself screaming and kneeling at his side, condemned to watch, useless, helpless as Steve is dying in front of his eyes.

In a past lifetime swell guy Bucky Barnes always had his back. With his bare fists in Brooklyn’s back alleys, with his sniper rifle in the midst of the Second World War, with Captain America’s shield on a train speeding through the Alps. Until he died for his friend.

The Winter Soldier on the other hand is only able to hurt and kill. When he should have protected Steve, he just stood there with a stupid grin on his face, letting his selfish hatred and greed for revenge consume him. Stood there and waited, waited, just waited until it was too late. He could have shot Rumlow a hundred times, but instead he did fucking **nothing**.

As much as he hates himself for all the things he did for Hydra, all the murders and cruelties, it’s nothing compared to the hatred he feels now, towards himself and his utter uselessness. Not only is he constantly hurting Steve, he’s also incapable of protecting him. Just like the Black Widow said, it’ll be better for him if Bucky stays away.

But he already knew that. He should have never come back.

It’s all his fault. He has no one to blame but himself.

 

* * *

 

It’s pain that wakes him up from a fitful sleep, blooming from his shoulder in waves pushing through his flesh, pounding at his skull. He groans, blinks with heavy, swollen eyelids against the sunlight and blindly gets up to search a med kit for painkillers. Without water he downs half of the package and slumps back into the pilot seat, wishing their numbing effect would kick in even sooner. The serum’s already working overtime healing his shoulder, so thankfully it doesn’t have the capacity to burn drugs from his system as efficiently as usual.

But it’s not the pain he desperately wants to get away from, it’s the bloodstained image of Steve which plagues his frayed brain like it’s the only memory he ever had.

He doesn’t know how often he repeats the movement whenever he wakes up. Cold, metal fingertips prying his lips apart, round, hard pills spilling over his tongue, bitter candy, dry sand between his teeth. Ignores hunger and thirst in favor of morphine and the kind oblivion that sleep will bring him.

Until a night or two later the packets of painkillers are all scattered and empty. Reluctantly he gets up to check the med kit again, but between antibiotics and iodine tablets there’s nothing left to keep his mind numb and safe. For a moment he stares down at the pointless pills in his metal hand, too scared to manage more than a disappointed glare while the fog in his head slowly starts to clear. If only he’d get a message from Steve, even the Black Widow would be a welcome distraction right now, anything as long as they tell him, he’s not dead yet. He realizes his hopes are disgustingly childish and naïve. A dog whining at the locked door, waiting obediently, desperately for its master to come home while they’re already holding his funeral. His gaze drifts to the windows. Fresh, soft snow covers the ground in a thin sheet, it’s getting colder every day.

 

* * *

 

It’s been fifty-four hours since he last spoke to Steve. Fifty-four hours, twenty-seven minutes and thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-ei- He’s restless, he’s sca- no, the Winter Soldier is not fucking scared. He just has to follow orders and wait and eventually he’ll see him again.

The pain in his shoulder helps him stay awake, when his eyelids droop he claws his fingers into the wound, he stares up at the gray sky when the sun rises and he still stares at it when the sun goes down again behind thick clouds and snow falling down.

He lies low and waits, and then he waits some more, just like Steve told him to. This time he obeys and is good so Steve doesn’t have to worry anymore. It’s the least he can do. If Steve ever wants to see him again, he’ll contact him, just like he said he’d do. If not... that’s okay, Steve being alive is the only thing that matters. He’d never expected anything from Steve to begin with. And then he’d gotten so much more. Steve had cared for him, touched him without causing pain and even laughed with him. It was more than he could ever have hoped for. All the Winter Soldier really deserves is a cell without windows, a death sentence and hell for the rest of eternity.

It’s snowing outside, thick and heavy flakes falling down to suffocate the earth. A silent lullaby to sing it to sleep. He’s so tired.

 

* * *

 

_“He died, you know?” A too young voice whispers._

_It stares down at the child, a knife at her throat._

_She doesn’t care. She was taught not to care. “They’re all lying to you.”_

_It shakes its head minutely. It’s not true what she says. The Widows are trained to lie._

_“Where is he then? Your Captain, your friend, your Steve?”_

_It doesn’t remember him, doesn’t hate him, doesn’t speak of him._

_“He abandoned me.” His voice is rusted and faint, covered in dust._

_A small, tender hand on his cheek, wiping away tears that aren’t there. “No, little... No, Bucky. He died in a plane crash fifty years ago.”_

_She’s wrong. “He’s alive and he’s happy. He’s alive and... He’s...” The privilege of a weapon is to feel nothing. Neither grief nor despair. “Please, wipe me.”_

_Malfunction._ Reset required.

The hum of electricity becomes louder, the sound of waves breaking gently at the riverbank as Lethe sings him a familiar song of mercy, silent but true. Singed hair curling, the smell of ozone and heated metal sweet like molten sugar on his tongue, a current reaching for his brain to slice away, to slice away the memories.

“No.” He whispers, grits his teeth and shakes his head sluggishly. He doesn’t deserve oblivion and as long as Steve isn’t dead he certainly doesn’t want it. He may have seen him die but he also heard his voice. Captain America has the goddamn serum to keep him alive, to survive falling from the sky and freezing to death. Even before, he survived every sickness and hardship life threw at him, Steve is strong, so much stronger than himself. He’s alive, he has to be. Bucky won’t make the same mistake Steve had seventy years ago. Until he’s seen his burned corpse with his own eyes he refuses to believe anything else.

But the memories keep getting worse, prey on him when he is weak and desperate. It’s his own personal hell where Steve dies over and over again because Bucky refuses to accept it.

 

* * *

 

_It cleans the blood and dirt from its weapons while they wait for extraction._

_“Don’t worry.” She tells it without hiding the bitterness in her voice._

_It lifts its head and follows her gaze to the flames in the distance._

_“You won’t have to remember this. They’ll wipe you.”_

_The air is heavy with the stench of burning corpses and gasoline. Remember what? It just answers with a lopsided shrug._

_She bares her teeth. She hates it, she envies it? Then smiles at it, razor-sharp and wrong. “He killed himself, you know? He took the easy way out.”_

_It meets her eyes with wary confusion._

_She leans in to share a secret. “I’ve got something for you.” She hands it a yellowed article and watches it read until he remembers._

_Soft lips moving without sound. Long, nimble fingers, a gentle touch on numb skin. Summerblue eyes deep like the sky turning into dull plastic orbs. “Please, wipe me.” He stares in horror at his clean hands and all he sees is red and all he hears are screams and all he feels are knives slicing him apart. “Please.”_

_Her bloody hand on his cheek to cover up the tears. “Soon.” She mocks him._

 

* * *

 

He blinks confused and sees white behind black bars. He blinks again, trees in the snow. He’s kneeling in the middle of a forest lit only by muted moonlight drawing shadows like claws into the ground, behind him his footprints are the only reminder how he got here. A flight he can’t remember, but his chest is heaving with harsh, labored breaths and he feels lightheaded from the lack of air in his lungs. Beyond that, there’s nothing. In his head an empty desert, the horizon a ruler-straight line of ice. _“Please, wipe me.”_ His voice echoes through the void hundredfold, a perpetual and deafening chorus of all the times the Winter Soldier begged to be freed from his memories. He wants to bury himself in the forest.

He drags his fingers through the soil beneath him, to find a hold as the world tilts, to feel the brittle skin catch and split on frozen twigs and sharp-edged stones. Though when the pain finally reaches his muddled brain it’s languid and subdued and it takes a while to pull him out of his stupor. With a start he scrambles to his feet only to end up on all fours when his aching legs won’t support him even one step. His whole body is numb with coldness, his clothes are soaked through and stiff with ice. He must have been here for quite some time. Hiding in the cold from his memories. But he can’t hide, he should have never hidden to begin with. He needs to get back to the Quinjet. He needs to be there when Steve calls.

He stumbles, runs through the forest following his own track through the snow, over thick roots and broken branches, down a steep rock and over a half frozen stream. Though he hurries it takes him an hour until he reaches the jet and slumps exhausted into the pilot seat where he’s supposed to be. Where he’s supposed to wait for a message from Steve. He knows it’ll come, sooner or later, when Steve will have healed up.

He’ll say ‘Hey, Buck’ with his bright voice and a big smile on his… no, he’ll say ‘Soldier’ soft and a little reserved ‘Your mission is to come back home.’ or rather he’ll command ‘Your mission is to return to base.’ Then he’ll expect a report. ‘Why didn’t you save me?’ he’ll want to know, eyes cast down at the form he’ll be filling out. Request for Transfer. ‘You were supposed to protect me.’

What answer can he possibly give him? ‘I didn’t know Rumlow would blow himself up. I didn’t see it coming.’ But of course he knew. He should have known. The fucking Winter Soldier should recognize a vest laden with explosives. Should have noticed the bright red wiring and the trigger in Rumlow’s hand. He should have seen it coming and he should have prevented it!

 _“I’ll make sure you’ll be the last one I kill.”_ Somewhere in that Hydra base he had the chance to kill Rumlow and didn’t.

‘You should have killed him.’ Does Steve say things like that? ‘Kill whoever wants to hurt me. Why else do I keep you around?’

But... ‘But you said...’ _“Please, never leave me.”_ ‘you said…’ _“You’re everything to me.”_

‘Oh silly, little thing, I never said that.’ no, he’ll say ‘Killing is the only thing you’re good for.’ No! Steve will say “I’ve missed you, Buck. I’ve missed you so much.”

If he’ll say anything at all.

His eyes go wide and his head sinks into his open hands. He’s so scared of losing him, of never seeing him again. “I’ve missed you too, Stevie.” He whimpers into empty space and curls up like the frightened, worthless animal he is. God, he is so selfish wanting Steve to miss him. It’s just... he wants to be this Bucky-person Steve misses. He wants his life back. He wants it so badly, to be whole, to be loved, to belong. A home with Steve.

He falls asleep to smiles on the beach, laughter in the wind, a warm body in his arms. Two boys hand in hand untouchable by sickness or poverty. Silly dreams that always were impractical and unimportant. He despises them so much he’s almost grateful when the scene changes into something more real and red.

 

* * *

 

A small LED blinks in a soft, orange color to signal an incoming call. He keeps his arms slung tightly around himself and just stares at it. Like if he doesn’t move, time will stop moving with him and he doesn’t have to make a choice.

If Steve’s dead he doesn’t want to know anyway. ‘Funeral’s in a week. Don’t make a mess out of it and stay away.’ He can already hear the Black Widow say in her stern voice.

If Steve’s alive, well everything’s fine. No need to answer the call then. It’s not like he would hear Steve’s voice anyway. Steve has people, friends to do the more tiresome work for him. No need to listen to someone telling him ‘Captain America regrets to inform you that his time is far too valuable to waste it on a deranged serial killer.’

_“You would never abandon me, right?”_

_“No, never. Don’t ever doubt that.”_

From afar he watches his hand pick up an earpiece, he hears his voice void of the fear and despair it should be vibrating with. This goddamn hope, this fucked up childish part of him that never **once** accepted Steve’s death. “Is he alive?”

“Hey, soldier. Glad to hear you made it.”

“Steve?” He can barely hear himself whisper over the rush of relief flooding his whole body. Steve is okay, everything’s fine, just like he promised him. Steve is okay. And a small, greedy voice adds, Steve even called you, he wants you back, he’ll ask you to come home.

“Listen, I’m sorry but I don’t have much time. Hydra is still after me. They’re getting a lot of support from the cells in Europe. But don’t worry. I’ll deal with this, I just need to know you’re safe, okay?”

“Steve, no, I-” want to help, he tries to tell him.

“Please, you need to stay hidden... Tony found out that you killed his parents. I’m afraid he’ll... please, just stay put, okay? I can take care of myself. I’m not alone, my friends are helping, so you don’t need to worry. It’ll all be over soon, I promise.”

Steve is such a careless idiot. “No, I can’t-” Did he just hear a gunshot? “Steve, where are you?” More guns are fired, then the call crackles out for a moment overwhelmed by the noise of an explosion. “STEVE?”

“‘M fine. Gotta go, Buck. See you soon.” And with a soft click his voice is gone, suddenly, leaving nothing but fear and worry.

Bucky didn’t even have a chance to ask about Steve’s injuries. They’d seemed fatal when he last saw him, but obviously he’d overreacted and his messed up brain had twisted his perception, making them appear far worse than they’d actually been.

But still nothing’s alright. Steve is in danger and that means Bucky needs to stop being a lazy, sulking fuck-up. The Winter Soldier is a highly trained operative who is able and willing to do whatever it takes to protect Steve. He’ll get his SPL back up to 75 %, establish a secure internet connection, locate the nearest jet-fuel depot and raid it for F-34. Operational and mobile he’ll burn Hydra to the ground.

After all, killing is something he should be good at and if he screws it up again, well, the only person to pay the price will be himself.

 

* * *

 

Bucky dips his blood and flesh fingers into the pot of grease and brushes them over his face, from the bridge of his nose outwards in one slow stroke. His closed eye yields softly under the pressure of the coated fingertips as he spreads the oily paste over skin. He repeats the motion over his left side before he turns on the water faucet to wash the color from his hand. It’s simple black shoe polish he found in a drawer in the safe house and it requires a lot of soap and scrubbing to get it off again, but the horrified faces of his prey will be worth the hassle.

With clean hands Bucky reaches for a towel to dry them and then checks his weapons over once more. Knives, grenades, guns with enough ammunition to kill a small army. All ready and set to go to war. This is him now. Not a mindless killing machine under Hydra’s control but a person of his own volition and he’s doing this for Steve because he wants to, because it’s the right thing to do. Of course Bucky’s still nothing more than a monster made to kill. And he’s just fine with that because this is the monster that’s going to protect Steve.

 

* * *

 

The first Hydra base is only a small one in northern Finland. He gives himself a day to stake it out and hijack the security system to avoid any undesired surprises. By nightfall he decides everyone left in the building with the front of a small electronics store is fair game for the Winter Soldier. Alarms disabled it’s fairly easy to get inside through a backdoor and then down the stairs to gain entrance to the lower levels. The two guards notice him instantly but the deep, gushing cuts through their throats seem to impair their ability to call for help.

He catches the next agent alone and it’s really hard to kill her quickly instead of taking his sweet time. From behind he drives a knife into the muscles between her shoulder blades and drags it downwards forcefully scraping it over her ribs. Then grabs her shoulder to turn her around, shifts his grip on the blade and slices criss-cross through the shirt before his free hand comes up to cup the base of her neck. His fingers inch upwards to her head to hold it in place when he thrusts the knife horizontally into her skull just above the ear. Only when her body slumps to the floor he realizes she didn’t even scream. Convenient, but it leaves him with a sense of failure.

Another Hydra agent has plenty of time to shriek and squeal as he tries to crawl away from the Winter Soldier with white stubs of bone sticking out of his legs. It’s ugly and messy, more importantly it’s essential to his plan but, shit, those sweet sounds of agony and pure horror make his heart beat faster with an euphoric high. Steve is wrong to deny him his revenge. He might have read about what Hydra did to the Winter Soldier, but he doesn’t **know** , he wasn’t **there** when it happened. He can never understand what it feels like to be systematically broken down into pieces through torture. To grovel at their feet and do whatever they want only so they’ll _please, please_ don’t hurt you again. To betray and lose every shred of yourself to end up as an empty creature because it’s the only way to _no, please stop, stop, don’t…_ to avoid a little pain.

By the time the last Hydra agent faints with a pulse so weak he probably won’t wake up again, Bucky is sporting the widest, happiest grin on his lips. Just for the drama he writes ‘Let’s make this fun’ on the concrete wall and laughs with the knowledge of behaving like the worst cliché psychopath of any movie. Lucky for him it’s all part of the mission. Hydra needs to believe their worst nightmare is coming to get them so they’ll scatter and hide or mobilize to take the Winter Soldier down. So they won’t even think about hunting Steve.

The next two hours he sits in the communications room, humming to himself and ruining the keyboards with the copious amount of blood dripping from his fingers. He skims through the data and downloads everything of importance onto a USB drive. Then he simply activates a Red Alert distress signal and leaves without covering any of his traces.

If Hydra wants to play, the game is on.

 

* * *

 

Four hours of sleep and a thirty minutes flight before he hits his next base in Kuopio. They’ve changed their security code but it only adds five minutes to his schedule of breaking in and disabling the alarm before he begins cutting them down as he finds them. Armed squads he disposes of nice and clean, only whenever he finds an agent alone he takes his time to end their life in a more creative way. He covers their mouths so they make this cute, quiet keening sound while he carves his thirst for blood into their flesh.

One of them even starts begging for mercy. He has a wife and three children, two boys and a girl, a sweet girl with curly hair and such bright, joyful eyes. They’re still in middle school, God, they’re still so young. They need him, they need their father, please, oh God, oh fuck, they love him. He’s, he’s not a good man, he knows that. But he never wanted this, he only ever did what he had to do to keep his family safe. And then he goes quiet and breaks into tears, because he realizes a thing like the Winter Soldier can’t understand him, a heartless monster like the Winter Soldier doesn’t have the faintest idea what he’s talking about. But Bucky understands him just fine, he only does what he has to do to keep his family safe. He knocks him out and stows him away for later when the rest of them are dead and he has time to spare for a self-indulgent reward.

The floor, the walls are red, red, red, covered with blood and bones and it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. He bites his lips to tamper his smile, he hasn’t felt this happy since… He’s never felt happier in his whole life.

 

* * *

 

A base far to the west in Portugal goes up in flames easily after he asks nicely for the self-destruct sequence. Same with the one in Edinburgh and another one north of Istanbul. In a small town near Krasnodar he stays for a while to watch, pinned down by the graceful movement of the fire and smoke rising towards the cloudless night sky. If only it would also burn away his memories of Hydra, turn them into ash and let the wind scatter them across the world. He doesn’t leave when choppers arrive, instead brings them down with RPGs. Days later he realizes he didn’t even know if they were Hydra.

 

* * *

 

He stalks in circles around his prey. He stalks around her because he’s got something to prove. She’s got a loaded gun pointed at his head and it won’t save her.

“Mr. Barnes, this is bullshit.” Her voice is calm as she cocks an unimpressed eyebrow. “I wasn’t even born when they tortured you.” She’s young, maybe in her early twenties. “I joined Hydra last year after my graduation because I want to help people survive in this chaotic world. Even a child can see how we are destroying ourselves. I understand your thirst for revenge, though, and I’d say you have every right to take it. What they did to you was wrong.” She hides the smug smile that appeared on her lips the moment he stopped in his tracks to stare at her. “But, I won’t apologize because it’s not my fault. I am innocent. If you kill me you’ll be just as much to blame as they are. And when you realize what you’ve done, and you **will** , because after everything you went through you’re still **human** , how are you going to redeem yourself?”

“It’s far too late for that.” He’s surprised by his own voice, he hadn’t meant to answer her. She’s Hydra, she’s prey, she doesn’t have the right to expect anything from him.

For the first time she seems to doubt herself. “You... you can’t possibly think you’re to blame for anything you did while Hydra controlled you. Hell, you were there, you must… know...?” She pauses confused and he licks his lips considering when he’ll go for the kill. “I’ve read your file.” A dry laugh escapes his lips causing her to frown at him and amend. “Well, parts of it, anyway. You were practically under mind-control. Even when they didn’t use the Memory Suppressing Machine they fed you so many lies there was no way for you to make any decisions for yourself. But now it’s completely different. You’re decisions are your own. You’re acting on your own free will.” Her voice had grown louder with conviction, but now her eyes go wide with some kind of revelation he can’t see and she starts laughing hysterically. “God, I’m stupid. You’re not. You’re the Winter Soldier. You don’t have a will of yo-”

He shoots her of his own fucking free will.

 

* * *

 

_“Please, please let me kill her.”_

_They never find an opportunity._

_But years later the Winter Soldier does._

_He’s watching her through the scope of his rifle._

_This is the woman he has to kill to make Captain America bleed._

_She’s wearing a red dress to mock him._

_“I’m invisible. I’m turning into you.”_

_Another day a little more of his Steve was taken from him._

_“It’s like some horrible dream.”_

_It was just the beginning._

_This is the woman who is loved by his Steve._

_Who gives him joy and laughter and hope in return._

_Who got everything he ever wanted just because she was born a woman._

_She smiles at somebody, her lips painted in a deep red, a glass of wine in her hand._

_She takes his arm, she leans in and kisses him like…_

_She kisses her husband._

_No, that’s not right. Captain America is her... Captain America should be there._

_Where is...? Where is Steve?_

_They catch him in another city, another continent._

_They don’t know why he ran from them and neither does he._

 

* * *

 

He’s bandaging up a broken wrist after a crappy mission in Denmark when the LED starts to blink and before he realizes what he’s doing he’s already at the communications console. “Steve?”

“Listen, soldier. We’ve been tracing Hydra’s money trail back to Germany. They have a base in Frankfurt which handles most of their financial resources. It would make things much easier for me if you could take it down.” He sounds hurried and stilted, like he’s talking to a stranger. Of course he does. He’s got every right to keep his distance after Bucky’s treated him like his personal trash bucket.

The Winter Soldier had been so used to shifting all blame onto his handler that he’d just continued to do so with Steve. He had always needed someone to blame for everything. And Steve had been there and he’d been an easy target. Took it all on himself. Welcomed it even, with open arms because they both had thought it was what Steve deserved. He takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry for all the things I’ve said to you. I was wrong, everything I’ve said was wrong, you didn’t deserve it. Please, Steve, I promise, I’ll never hurt you again. I’d rather die.” He stumbles through the apology, frantic and desperate, but it doesn’t matter. When the words are out and he finally managed to own up to his mistakes, he feels relieved.

After a short, devastating moment of silence Steve answers: “It’s okay, Bucky. I know you always have my back.” His voice is strained and mechanic, Bucky realizes, he’s lying. Steve doesn’t trust him, Steve doesn’t forgive him, Steve doesn’t want-

Bucky shakes his head. The sound quality of the call is pretty bad, he reminds himself. The persistent static and small, recurring cracks are making it impossible to identify the intonation of Steve’s voice. And how dare he assume to know Steve well enough to notice if he’s lying? Maybe the Bucky back in Brooklyn did, but certainly not this thing stitched together out of his shredded skin and broken bones. If he could just see Steve, talk to him in person, apologize kneeling at his feet. Then Steve would have to believe that Bucky is truly sorry for hurting him. Steve has forgiven him before, hasn’t he? “Please, Steve, I want- I need to see you. Please let me come and see you.” He’s aware of how needy he sounds but he can’t bring himself to care.

Another pause. “No, Bucky, can’t you understand? I’m not safe. Just do this one thing for me, okay?”

Bucky’s so stupid, Steve had to spell it out for him. If he can protect Steve, if he can prove he can be just as useful as swell guy Bucky Barnes, only then he’ll deserve forgiveness. “Of course, Steve.” There’s nothing else left to say.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up spread out on cold, wet concrete. He doesn’t know who he is or how he got here. It settles something right in his stomach.

_ “Вставай. Убей всех.” _

Back on his feet he doesn’t even try to balance against the vertigo of a spinning world, instead he stumbles towards the nearest human shape, grabs their head and shoves a knife through their throat up into their head. A sluggish heartbeat later he’s on top of another and snaps the tendons of their neck. Only then screams start to filter through the rush of blood in his ears and Bucky glances around to realize that he’s kneeling over two civilian bodies in the middle of a street that was busy with nightlife a moment ago and is now a mess of people fleeing in panic from the Winter Soldier and the flames of the burning building behind him.

Ice claims his flesh as he freezes up staring horrified at the two corpses while the pool of blood beneath them continues to grow. There are no Hydra insignia on their clothes, no weapons in their hands, just two people in the wrong place at the wrong time. He swallows the ‘I’m sorry’ and he swallows the guilt. It’s by far not the first and it certainly won’t be the last time he’s killed innocents. Two more or less really shouldn’t make any difference. He doesn’t **want** to kill them but he doesn’t have the fucking luxury to consider every little possibility where civilians could get hurt. And it’s not like he can just lay down his weapons and stop altogether. The Winter Soldier has a mission and failure is not an option. Right?

With a sudden jolt he’s upright and running away from the two dead bodies. Steve would know. Steve would tell him ‘We can’t save everyone.’ Steve would take the knives from his hands and tell him to stop. ‘You don’t have to fight anymore.’ His whole life Bucky’s done nothing but fight and he’s so tired of it. But Steve needs his help, that’s why he can’t stop. He can’t ever stop.

 

* * *

 

After Frankfurt the missions blur together. Europe is one big carcass infected with Hydra and he barely destroys four of their bases in a week. Four of probably a hundred. He doesn’t waste time anymore to stake them out, he just sneaks in, sets the charges and is out before the buildings go up in flames. Some of the places are empty anyway, cleared out in a hurry. Others are already burning when he gets there. Worst are the bases where they’re lying in wait for him. More than once he ends up wasting days licking his wounds and wondering if Steve is safer now. If there will ever come a day when he’ll call and tell him to come home.

‘Hey, Buck, how are things on your end?’ He’ll ask, sweet smile and apple pie voice.

“I miss you, Stevie. I miss you so goddamn much. I- I... I wanna come home.” Like it’s 1945 and the war is won, Hitler killed himself and Steve never had to see a single battlefield. He’ll cross the Atlantic back to New York and their tiny apartment in Brooklyn. Steve will be waiting for him at the harbor and let Bucky fall into his arms, because he deserves this, because he just survived a fucking war, because he only killed a bunch of Nazis who were asking for it.

“Welcome home, Buck.”

 

* * *

 

He’s in Iceland this time. Because why shouldn’t Hydra need a fortress in Iceland on some godforsaken island off the west coast?

Like all the others it goes up in flames and Bucky’s the only one left to watch the column of smoke trying to reach the sky while parts of the building crumble and crash into the ocean below. Though, all he has eyes for are the sea gulls fleeing across the water. Roughly 2500 miles, maybe two hours with the Quinjet and he could be in New York. He doesn’t even know if Steve would be there. It’s been twenty-six days since he last talked to him, the longest time yet since he left Hydra. Steve could be dead and the only way Bucky would hear about it would be an article in the newspaper.

There’s another way to find out.

“Captain Rogers’ phone, how may I help you?” A British accent answers his call to Steve’s StarkPhone and Bucky sighs disillusioned.

“Hi JARVIS... uhm...” Here’s the Winter Soldier, I’d like to talk to Steve, please...? Oh God he’ll sound so pathetic. But this is why he called. He just wants to know if Steve’s okay. Even if Stark hates him and obviously has Steve’s phone tapped and Bucky’ll end up with Iron Man hunting him across the globe.

“Sir, may I ask you to come back to the Avengers Tower? I’m sure Captain Rogers would be very happy if you’d come to see him. We’re all worried about you.” The AI says ominously with a soft voice. So this is what JARVIS sounds like when it’s lying.

“Please, I just want to know if...” Steve’s okay... Will Stark hurt him, when he realizes how much Steve means to the murderer of his parents? “Sorry, I called. And uh... could you tell Stark, I’m sorry about his parents? I remember them.” He cringes at his own words and lets his head fall into the cool metal of his hand. “I hope you won’t get into trouble, JARVIS. Sorry for everything. Good bye.”

“Sir, please wai-”

Sorry, sorry, sorry. At the end of the day his sorry is worth shit.

 

* * *

 

Not half an hour later the LED on the Quinjet’s comm console blinks and Bucky doesn’t know if it’s Stark who’s tracked him down because of his stupid call or if it’s Steve.

When he answers the call and all he can hear at first is somebody crying, his senses are immediately on high alert. “Steve?” He asks carefully. If Stark has done something to him, he’ll wish his parents had died before they could give birth to him.

“Hey, Buck. I…”

And Bucky nearly rips out part of the console he’s holding onto because Steve’s voice vanishes behind static as the connection threatens to break up. “Steve?! What’s wrong? Where are you?”

“…not safe. There’s a bounty on my head.” Is the next cut off sentence he hears, then maybe a laugh? “We have a lead, but nobody wants to act on it until they’re absolutely sure. Which is…”

“Steve, who the fuck put a bounty on your head?” He demands to know and adds frantically: “You’re Captain America!” Which is pretty childish, because the Winter Soldier should know not even the president of the United States is safe when it comes to Hydra.

“…for me by then. So I just wanted to say I’m sorry and good bye.” Steve snivels, hurt and small, and it breaks Bucky’s heart.

“Don’t worry Steve. I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them all.” He swears and the red tinted images forming in his head are only cut short by Steve’s: “I love you, Bucky.” One sentence, four words and then the connection is gone, leaving silence he can't hear because his ears are ringing.

Bucky **knows** he can't trust his own mind. This is just another one of his silly daydreams. Steve doesn't love him, Steve can barely stand the man who's nothing more than a flickering shadow of his best friend. But it's already too late, real or not, the words have seeped through his veins and wrapped themselves around his heart, fitting themselves like soft cotton between the serrated shards to stop the bleeding and mending the broken pieces back together. For the first time he takes a breath and feels like he could overcome the monster Hydra made him into, like he’s actually more than their used up toy.

The Winter Soldier doesn’t know what love is, but Bucky Barnes does. He killed for it and he died for it and he's prepared to live through another seventy years of hell if it means Steve will survive. “I love you, too.” He chokes out his reply, with no one there to listen.

 

* * *

 

Though he doesn’t dare to waste any time on food or sleep it takes him two days until he finally finds a lead on a dark net. To his surprise it doesn’t point to another Hydra-wannabe-overlord but instead to multiple powerful politicians all over the world. On second thought, what’s the difference? They only got into such a position by being ruthless, greedy and corrupt. They’re selfish people who care about nothing but wealth and power. Nobody will miss them, he tells himself.

 

The first politician dies in a horrible car accident and as Bucky watches the scene later on the news he can hear Maria Stark cry her husband’s name as the Winter Soldier chokes her to death.

 

Another one screams in agony as the poison eats away his insides. Bucky’d stayed on purpose in the room next to him, giddy with excitement and his ear pressed close to the wall. The screaming doesn’t stop until Bucky drowns it out with his own.

 

When a senator falls to the ground with a hole in her head, he feels like the Winter Soldier all over again. Everything is wrong, like he’s back with Hydra and they want him to kill and kill and kill. He doesn’t want this, but it’s not his choice. Steve will be proud of him. Steve will ask him to come home. Steve will say ‘I love you’ again.

 

While he skims through the schedule of the next victim he throws up and starts shivering until his mind just blanks out. Later the politician turns up dead and Bucky wakes up at a rundown motel with empty syringes scattered on the floor and no memory of the last twenty-four hours. It takes him another day before he can force himself out of the corner behind the bed. All that keeps him going is the thought that if he doesn’t do this Steve will die. If he fails Steve will die. If he doesn’t kill the people who want to hurt Steve he will die.

 

The American ambassador looks at him with panicked eyes. “What- what do you want? Money’s in the safe. The- the combination is o- one, seven, eight, t-”

“Captain America.” Bucky pauses, startled by the coldness of his own voice. “Remove the bounty on his head.”

She stares at him dumbfounded before she pulls herself enough together to stammer: “What are you...? Yes, yes of course I will do that. Everything you want, just, please don’t kill me.”

“Call them.” He orders and gives her a phone.

“What? Who?”

Killing is so much easier than this. “The people you asked to put a bounty on his head. You don’t look the type who spends time on Tor.”

“You are mistaken. I- I’d never-”

He lets her scream when he breaks her little finger. They’re in the middle of nowhere, no one will hear her. “Liar. It’s your name, it’s your account the money comes from.”

“Pl-please, I’ll do whatever you want. Please, please, please. No.” She starts babbling until he breaks another one. “I don’t- I don’t know what you want from me.” And another. “I don’t understand. It wasn’t me. Please, stop.” Another and another and another and she cries and begs and he can’t stop until she’s long dead. And the ground is red, red, red and he falls on his knees, curls in on himself and screams, high-pitched and choked. He screams he’s sorry and it doesn’t mean a thing to either of them.

 

He sits on the floor of the Quinjet, surrounded by scattered parts of the bomb he’s piecing together. When his eyes fall close from the lack of sleep he doesn’t bother. He hasn’t had a clear thought for days now. His hands move on their own, screw parts together, set up the wiring and install the timer. He’s done this a hundred times before, probably could do it drugged to the gills.

He’s still coming down from the cocaine when he sneaks into the parking lot of the news agency the next day and installs the bomb to one of their cars which is booked for the reporters who’ll cover the political meeting today. Their schedule and parking place has already been changed to avoid most collateral damage. He knows it’s not enough, he should be doing this himself. It wouldn’t be that difficult to fake a press card and get himself inside the premises where he could set the bomb at a much better location, maybe even inside the meeting room. No, he shouldn’t even use a bomb since he can’t really control who will get hurt. He should be taking his prey down one by one. But he has a mission he mustn’t fail and he’s so tired and he’s such a pathetic coward. He’ll be far away when the bomb goes off so he doesn’t have to see their faces, so he doesn’t have to hear them scream.

This is the last time, he promises himself. After this he won’t kill anyone ever again, he lies to himself.

 

* * *

 

For the time being he stops hunting Hydra. He becomes a ghost again, licks his wounds and rarely leaves his room. He lies on the hard mattress in his apartment and watches the sunlight wander across the wooden floorboards. Through the open windows winter enters his room and lulls him into sleep. As his eyes fall shut and the quiet cold takes him away he wishes nobody would wake him up for another mission ever again.

He doesn’t dream. The nightmare finds him when he comes into his apartment a few days later and Steve is standing with his back turned in the middle of the room.

Bucky knows why he’s here. But ‘I’m tired.’ He’ll tell Steve. ‘I can’t do this anymore.’

Steve will understand, because Steve loves him and Steve will run away with him and Steve will smile. ‘Of course, Buck. Everything’s okay now.’ And Steve will take him into his arms and stroke his hair and say: ‘I’m so proud of you Buck. You saved me. The war is over and we both came home.’

Bucky’ll lean up to kiss him and Steve will kiss him back-

“Do you know me?” Steve asks with a carefully neutral voice while he’s holding himself like he’s expecting a fight.

_“No, I don’t.”_

For a terrible moment they’re back on the Helicarrier and Bucky is frozen in place as he fumbles through the memory until his brain finally catches up. Steve’s wearing an earpiece, he’s wearing his uniform. He’s not alone here, maybe not even of his own accord. Of course Captain America can’t be seen fraternizing with a known terrorist. “You’re Steve. I’ve read about you in a museum.”

From Steve’s earpiece comes a tiny voice: “They’ve set the perimeter.” And all Bucky can think is, please, please don’t make me fight again, as he glances around to calculate the best exit strategy. He feels Steve watching him and when their eyes meet again Bucky silently begs to let him go.

“I know you’re nervous. And you have plenty of reason to be. But you’re lying.” Steve continues as if Bucky should have any idea of what’s going on.

He tries to read him for any sign Steve might be giving him, but there's nothing. Steve is here as Captain America, prepared to take the bad guy down with whatever it takes, the bad guy being the Winter Soldier. “I don’t want to do this anymore.” Is all he can whisper as he shakes his head and lifts his open hands in a hopefully peaceful gesture.

“They’re entering the building.” The tiny voice narrates.

Steve looks out of the window, concerned like he’s the one being hunted. “You killed twelve people in Vienna, seventy more were injured. Special Forces are coming here now. And they’re not planning on taking you alive.” He says gravely and steps forwards.

“That’s smart.” He tries to swallow his fear and fails. “Good strategy.” His eyes follow their footsteps above him on the roof.

“This doesn’t have to end in a fight, soldier.”

He grits his teeth at those words as his tired mind aches for them to be true. But Steve is wrong. If he doesn’t defend himself he’ll be killed. It’s as simple as that. When he hears the Special Forces on the other side of the door preparing to storm the apartment, he pulls the glove from his metal hand and lets resignation wash away his fear. “It always ends in a fight.”

“Why did you kill them?” Steve demands to know.

To protect you. To save you. Because you told me to. Why does Steve pretend to be ignorant? When Bucky slowly lifts his eyes again to meet his gaze, all he can see is irritation and confusion reflecting his own. “You know why.” He starts hesitantly, half his attention still on the noise outside the door, the other half trying desperately to make heads or tails of the situation.

“No, I don’t.” Steve cuts him off with a pained voice like he **does** know the answer but he doesn’t want it to be true. Why is Steve doing this to him?!

Everything is terribly wrong. And Bucky wants to scream at his face, because he doesn’t understand what’s going on and what Steve wants from him and it’s not his fault. For once it’s not his fucking fault! He did nothing wrong. It wasn’t revenge. He did it to protect the only person who cares about him. He killed them to save Steve!

Steve, who is looking at him like the Winter Soldier’s mask never came off.

“Breach! Breach! Breach!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Вставай. Убей всех.” - “Get up. Kill everyone.”
> 
> \---  
> Cliffhanger? I don't know what you're talking about, never heard of it.
> 
> if you want to watch [the original scene from Civil War](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qzurnd3jyY) again, it's on yt.
> 
> Well here we are, the story was planned up to this point, I have only a vague idea what happens next^^’ and oh gosh where am I gonna get that happy end I want? x.x it's going to take me ages to write it...

**Author's Note:**

> [05/14] the next chapter is still only half written...wow


End file.
